Johnson County Commission approves funding for more than 20 new mental health staff
The Johnson County Commission voted Thursday to approve adding 21 new mental health staffers to help reduce caseloads for current case managers.
Commissioners voted unanimously to spend $2.1 million in reserve funds for fiscal year 2023 to create the full-time positions at the Johnson County Mental Health Center, which will allow the organization to hire additional clinicians and case managers for adult, children and family services.
Tim DeWeese, the director of the mental health center, said the staffing increase will help the center handle demand, which exceeds the standard rates of cases per case manager by 273 clients for adult services and by 50 clients for children and family services.
Staff said they hope the additional positions and more manageable workloads will also improve employee retention.
“If you have a lower work load for your employees, than they can provide higher quality services, more intensive services, so you should see also a decrease in crisis use,” DeWeese said. “You should see an increase in employment. You should see a decrease in hospitalization. You should see on the kids’ side, an increase in school functioning.
“There’s going to be a host of things we should be able to demonstrate six months, a year from now that will demonstrate the impact that these 21 positions have,” he said.
The additional staff will help the center maintain its new status as a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, a national model being implemented in Kansas which provides funding to improve the accessibility of care, DeWeese said.
Mental health center officials could look to increase staffing in future years, as well, as the center looks to bring services to more community members.
Chairman Ed Eilert said caseload issues have impacted workers in both mental health and health care in general in recent years.
“This action that has been requested will give us the opportunity to increase the number of professionals to reduce ... the workload,” he said. “If you look at the medical profession, at the hospitals and you talk with hospital administrators they’re facing the same issue because of the workload.”
