County board holds back teen mental health funding
Health and Human Services Director Lindsey Manfrin requested the board approve $75,000 in Oregon Health Authority funding for school-based health center expansion and $28,189 for immunization services last week, but the board voted to delay a decision for a week to see data about parental communication.
Board Chair Lindsay Berschauer said, “In my four years of being here we’ve seen, unfortunately, numerous suicides, teen suicides ... and I’m very concerned about where parental involvement and parental notification comes into play when you’re talking about a school-based health center providing mental health services and crisis services for a teenager who is potentially in crisis. At what point are the parents notified? Are they notified? How are they notified? What do they know?”
The county has three school-based health centers in McMinnville, Willamina and Newberg and the funding would be used to expand the Newberg program, according to Manfrin.
Berschauer said state law dictates a 14-year-old can consent to mental health services without parental notification, but parents are required to be notified if the student is suicidal or in crisis.
“My concern is that if we have teenagers going through these programs that we are funding and for whatever reason, because of state law, parents are not informed or not informed soon enough,” she said.
Commissioner Mary Starrett said government health programs remove parents from mental health conversations, but also in areas such as immunization, abortion and birth control.
“The legislature has determined that the age of medical consent is the age of 14. That means that anything goes and parents don’t need to be brought into the discussion,” Starrett said. “Once you send your child at a government school to a government funded school-based health center ... you have lost that connection in terms of what they’re being told, how they’re being counseled and what services are being provided. So it is ‘proceed with caution’ if your child is going to a school-based health center because all bets are off.”
Berschauer requested Manfrin or the school district provide data on the extent parents are involved and the outcomes of mental health cases at this Thursday’s meeting.
“I’ve seen some red flags recently that indicate that parents are not being informed when there is daily crisis counseling happening with a teenager and I just am dumbfounded by what I’ve been hearing,” she said. “There’s no way I cannot step in and ask for this information given what I’ve seen and heard.”
The funding is the only agenda item up for a vote on Thursday’s agenda, which also features an update on economic development from Manager Gioia Goodrum.
They will meet 10 a.m. on Oct. 24 in room 32 of the Yamhill County Courthouse, 535 N.E. Fifth St. The public may attend in person or by Zoom or watch the meeting live-streamed on YouTube. The Zoom link is embedded in the agenda online; the agenda, meeting packet and links to YouTube and an audio recording are located on the county’s meetings webpage at co.yamhill.or.us/meetings.
Comments
Dawn
We're in a mental health crisis and young people are particularly vulnerable and need all the help they can get. Having grown up in home that viewed mental illness as a character flaw and where abuse was rampant had my mother and step-dad been told I had sought the punishment would have been severe!!!! Release the money to protect the most vulnerable!!!
Bleepbloop
I was sent a screen cap of a Facebook post by Ms. Berschauer. In it, she criticizes Mr. King for campaigning a few days after a recent teen suicide. This vile woman will politicize teen suicide to attack her opponent and then block funding for teen mental health. I used to think she was just extremely political. Now I realize she is a horrible person who will do whatever she needs to to score political points and stay in power.
Parents should not have access to notes and files from a psychiatrist/counselors treating teenagers. What if the parents are abusive and that is the reason a teenager has mental health problems. What if I a teenager knows their parents will find out about what is said and then refuses to say anything. If you ask 100 trained and certified counselors, psychologist and psychiatrist, they 99 of them will tell you it is best to keep the parents at arms length.
Lulu
The word "vile" sums up these two petty, vicious commissioners.