The Sangamon County Mental Health Board formed earlier this year to help make mental healthcare easier to access for county residents in need. Executive Director Dr. Tatyana Gardner sat down with Local Edition to share more on the board.
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Ben Singson
I am here with Dr. Tatyana Gardner. She is the executive director of the Sangamon County Mental Health Board. Tatyana, thank you very much for taking some time to talk with me.
Tatyana Gardner
Thanks for having me.
Ben Singson
All right. So first off, for anyone who isn't already aware, what exactly is the Sangamon County Mental Health Board?
Tatyana Gardner
So the Sangamon County Mental Health Board is what is considered a 708 board here in the state of Illinois. The board was formed after some investigation from the Sonya Massey Commission and the Mental Health Commission that was formed by the Sangamon County. After they found that creation of a 708 board could help balance out and fill some of the gaps within mental health services here in the county, the county, so taxpayers, residents, voted on a 0.5 sales tax increase in order to help create this board. So as a 708 board, we will be serving as a funding agency to help prioritize and promote more mental health services for Sangamon County.
Ben Singson
What are your responsibilities as executive director of this board?
Tatyana Gardner
So as executive director, this is a brand-new organization. So right now, my priorities and my responsibilities revolve around creating the organization. So prior to me starting, the board members were able to create their bylaws, create their meeting schedules. And so now it's my responsibility to continue building the organization. So right now we're working on our one year and three-year plans that by the state we have to have those turned in by November 30th. In addition to that, we're working and figuring out what's going to be the best way for us to distribute the funds that we get from the sales tax increase. So we're looking into grant management software. And it's my responsibility to just oversee all actions of the board, as well as provide them with recommendations on what I feel next steps should be. The board ultimately does get to make final decisions, but as executive director, it is my job to send them recommendations that they can act upon.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. What made you want to head up this board?
Tatyana Gardner
So, this kind of a two-part question. I was born and raised in Springfield, Illinois. I grew up right on the east side. I went to graduated from Southeast in 2015. So and where I still live, my childhood home is right on the east side, right in Ward 2. So the tragedies and the impact of her death, I saw firsthand. within my family, within people I love, within people I frequent and interact with on a daily basis. Prior to this job, I worked at the Springfield Urban League as their director of health initiatives. So I was already within the community providing services that individuals necessarily didn't have access to. I saw this job as an opportunity for me to expand that impact in an area where I saw it was affecting the people I was already serving. So just to have a bigger impact was what motivated me to apply for the job.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. So, what are some of the biggest challenges towards getting people the mental health services that they need, that people in the county are facing right now?
Tatyana Gardner
I think the continuity of care and just access to care. I've spent, I've only been on the job maybe 15 actual business days And I spent a lot of that time meeting with service providers, meeting with community stakeholders, asking them, what are the issues that they see? Obviously, I'm not. in the community every single day. So it's really important for me and my board members to interact with and communicate with and understand the challenges in a more deeper level. So right now, just access to care and the continuity of care is some of the biggest challenges that we're seeing.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. I guess what makes care so difficult to access in Sangamon County?
Tatyana Gardner
I think just like with any other kind of care, it's just a very complex system. You may have a provider that is able to provide one service, but they're not able to provide another service. And then we have three people trying to provide that same service and just the referral system. So there's just a lot of gaps. And it's not because we don't have the services available. It's just a very complex system. as I'm sure most people are familiar with, getting health insurance is a very, very complex system. So imagine that, but then within the services that are needed for mental health.
Ben Singson
Gotcha. So how long have you, how long has this board been holding public meetings? Remind me?
Tatyana Gardner
So the board started, I believe, in May of this year. So we are only in about month 6.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. And when you are holding these meetings, when you're inviting the public to talk to the board, what are you trying to kind of, what kind of information are you trying to get from them?
Tatyana Gardner
Just trying to hear what they would like to see from the board. Our board meetings are hosted on the last Wednesday of every month at 4 P.m. And those meetings are more so of our business meetings. We do allow public comment at those meetings. That is not really the opportunity for us to really hear out and seek out the information that we're looking for from the community. So since starting, we have established study sessions And those study sessions are more of an opportunity for us to interact and kind of talk and bounce ideas back and forth with the community and hear what it is that they want us to do and how we feel about things.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. There have been some county residents who have kind of, I guess, leveled criticisms at the board for holding these publicly accessible meetings at kind of inconvenient times for people who are say, working 9 to 5 shifts, like your November 18th meeting is gonna be held at 4 PM at the Sangamon South Auditorium. There was an article that I read from Illinois Times that said you'd bring the idea up to the board of pushing these meetings back and see what they had to say. Has any action been taken on that?
Tatyana Gardner
Yeah, so prior to me starting, our meetings were at 3 PM. After the meeting where I got appointed, it was presented to push those meetings back to 4 PM as well as change the location of them. And so that's why our October meeting was the first meeting that we had where the time was pushed back to 4 P.m. as well as a different location. In addition to that to kind of help compromise and allow opportunity for individuals who need more accessibility to our meetings. That's why we've implemented these study sessions. So, we had a study session on October 22nd. It was in the evening. It was in our Sangamon South Auditorium and it was hosted from 5 to 8 PM. And so, our hope and our goal is to have more of those to allow more of an opportunity so that people don't feel like if they may miss our regular business meeting and they still want their voices to be heard, they have the opportunity to do so at those study sessions. And we've also just recently implemented, you are now able to send in a written comment if you would like to our board e-mail address and we then share those during public comment during our regular board meetings.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. And in these, you know, public comments and these study sessions, excuse me, meetings, what have you, what are kind of the big issues that people in Sangman County are bringing to this board? What do they want you guys to tackle?
Tatyana Gardner
Just kind of what I've already talked about, the access to the care and the continuity of care. One thing I think is really notable for me to point out is the Sangman County Mental Health Board, we are not a direct service provider. We will serve as a funding agency to service providers. So that's why we've been extremely instrumental and extremely adamant and placing importance on hearing from these providers and hearing from community stakeholders about the kinds of programs that they think would benefit the residents so that as we're designing our NOFO, which is a notice of funding opportunity for people to apply for this funding, we are kind of able to implement in coordinate with them about what it is that they think that they'll be able to do so that when the funding comes available, it's made available for them to do so.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. Now obviously, this is very early in this board's, I guess, lifespan. What steps has the board taken or has the board planned to take to kind of address these issues that you have raised thus far?
Tatyana Gardner
So, I think the first thing that we did was we changed our meeting time. We allowed more accessibility, more opportunity for people to have public comment. We have a study session every week. They are every Tuesday at noon up in our offices. So that's kind of the first step that we took to kind of address some of the issues that were being raised to us. In addition to that, just Consistent listening to understand, consistent allowing opportunities to talk to different community stakeholders that we probably would have never imagined to speak to. I'm not sure if people know, but there are a plethora over 50 plus providers who provide either mental or behavioral health or substance use services to Sangamon County. So I'm sure as you can imagine, it's going to take me a while and take, you know, all of our board members a while to get to all of them to speak to all of them. But Those are the kind of steps that we're taking. And then just trying to lock down and figure out what we want our grant management to look like. What does that application look like? What does that NOFO look like? You know, what do we want residents to put in an application? What kinds of questions we want to ask them? So those are the steps that we're taking.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. I think you touched on something that I was hoping to ask about. There have been, I guess, some board members and county residents who believe that the board is not taking action or making decisions or rolling things out quite fast enough. What would you have to say to those concerns?
Tatyana Gardner
As I've been saying since I started, just please allow us grace. Imagine you start a brand new business. There's no template of how it should be ran. There's no anything for it. All you have is a name and people who are wanting to support you. We are starting from scratch. There are other 708 boards in the state of Illinois and having conversations with them, seeing how they implement things, seeing how they handle things, but Sangamon County is unique in its own way. So we want to make sure that what we're doing, we're providing for our residents is as transparent as possible and we make as few mistakes as possible. With everything that's new, there are going to be mistakes made. None of us are perfect. I know I'm not. But in order to do what's right for our constituents and our residents here, I want to make sure that I'm doing it right and not just doing it fast. So I think and I hope that our residents understand and hear me when I say that we may not be moving as fast as you want, but it's because we're trying to be as intentional as possible.
Ben Singson
Gotcha. Gotcha. And by this time next year, what do you hope this board has accomplished?
Tatyana Gardner
By this time next year, I think having all of our strategic priorities locked down, we're formulating those now in our one year and three-year plans. And hopefully, prayerfully, we're getting ready to start our first full round of funding.
Ben Singson
Gotcha, gotcha. All right, Dr. Tatyana Gardner, executive director of the Sangamon County Mental Health Board. Thank you very much.
Tatyana Gardner
Thank you.
