ORDER-2021-91 : Acceptance of a Melrose Wakefield Healthcare grant to support behavioral health programming

Transcript (~7 min @ 30:30)

Speakers identified by voice; unnamed voices are numbered within this recording. Auto-caption text — verify against the video.

▶ 30:28 Jeff McNaught: Thank you, Mayor Broderick. Thank you.

▶ 30:34 Paul Brodeur: My apologies for the frozen screen. I do not know why that has happened.

▶ 30:39 Jeff McNaught: With you in audio. Happened to us all. Next order is 2021-91, Acceptance of a Melrose-Wakefield Hospital Grant to Support Behavioral Health Programming. And again, I believe we have our Health Director with us, and I don't know if Mayor Broder is still on the phone.

▶ 31:02 Speaker 1: Health Director's coming in now. Okay.

▶ 31:07 Speaker 8: Director Clay, can you hear us? Yep, I can hear you. Yep. Sorry.

▶ 31:13 Speaker 5: I'm here. Good evening, Ms. Clay. The floor is yours. Thank you. So this is a

▶ 31:19 Speaker 8: relatively small grant, $14,000, a three-year grant. It's a Melrose-Wakefield combined grant from Melrose-Wakefield Healthcare. I don't know if any of you remember the old DON Determination of Needs money that the state has had for many years but basically when any of the hospitals invest in a large amount of capital they have to set aside a certain amount for grants to the community for 25 years I've been here the hospital hasn't been in that position but recently with the addition of a facility in Medford this money did become available so we applied for it it is basically twofold it is to decrease the stigma involved with behavioral health and mental illness as well as increase the use of behavioral health services among some of our harder to reach populations. The first year is primarily planning and the $14,000 is used mostly for four hours a week staff person. The person will be Kara Showers who's already an employee of the city. She does the Mass in Motion grant with Melrose and Wakefield already, so she's well acquainted with both communities. She's also the youth advisor in Wakefield for their substance abuse prevention

▶ 33:15 Jeff McNaught: coalition. Thank you, Ms. Clay. I see that Mayor Broder is back in the waiting room. I don't know if he was coming in for this as well, Madam Clerk. We can

▶ 33:36 Speaker 9: Certainly bring them back in if you'd like to go. No, I'm just a, I'm just an observer right now. Okay.

▶ 33:42 Jeff McNaught: We're going to get a questions from the counselors. So, 1st up, it's counter genealogy.

▶ 33:48 Maya Jamaleddine: Thank you chair. Thank you for coming before us. Do you have any idea of what I know? The focus is on. um um addiction and uh social emotion but how are we promoting how are we spreading the word that this service is gonna be available for our residents so um uba wasn't

▶ 34:13 Speaker 8: clear about the grant it's uh it's not about addiction uh it's about behavioral health issues in general um as far as the statistics we've been getting from interface which is the group that we contact with even before the pandemic stress and anxiety were the number one and number two issues and i'm sure that is the same if not even higher with the last year of the pandemic and the grant, especially the first year, is to come up with a communication plan by looking at the different populations, talking with the different populations to find out the best ways to communicate with them. Remember, Wakefield has a significant homeless population. It also has a significant number of group homes. And both communities have small but significant ethnic populations with different languages. So it is not the purpose of the grant is to come up

▶ 35:36 Maya Jamaleddine: with a plan for that. Okay. And you mentioned that Wakefield has a large homeless population. Do we know what is our population, homeless population in Maros?

▶ 35:45 Speaker 8: Right now it's one.

▶ 35:48 Speaker 3: Okay, thank you.

▶ 35:54 Speaker 5: Councillor Garipay.

▶ 35:59 Mark Garipay: Thank you, Chairman McNaught. Thank you, Ms. Clay, for being here. I don't have any questions on this order, but I personally would like to acknowledge everything that you and your department has done over this last year during this this COVID pandemic, we haven't had the opportunity to interact a lot over the last year with everything you have going on, but I wanna publicly acknowledge everything that your department has done through the pandemic with setting up safe flu clinics, testing, all the vaccination sites that we've had within the town. So I wanna personally thank you and thank all your department for that, thank you.

▶ 36:54 Jeff McNaught: Thank you. Thank you. Do we have any other councils with questions? Seeing no hands raised, what is the will of the committee?

▶ 37:04 Jeff McNaught: Motion to recommend? Second. Motion to recommend for passage by Councillor Garipay, seconded by Councillor Eccles.

▶ 37:14 Speaker 2: Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? Chair McNaught? Yes. Vice Chair Eccles? Yes. Councillor Tramontozzi? Yes. Councilor McMaster? Yes. Councilor Garipay? Yes. Councilor Grigoraitis? Yes. Councilor Migliorelli? Yes.

▶ 37:34 Speaker 2: Councilor Stewart? Yes. Councilor Thomas? Abstain. Councilor Jamaleddine? Yes. President Sinella? Yes. Ken, yes.

▶ 37:49 Jeff McNaught: The motion passes miss clay. Thank you for your time this evening.