Sublette County to create ‘System of Care’

by Tiffany Turner

Various organizations and local governments met last Wednesday, Dec. 3, to discuss and identify unmet needs, eliminate overlaps and coordinate services in Sublette County.

Several months ago, the county commissioners put Kathy Anderson, coordinator of Treatment Court, in charge of providing oversight to the various human or social service agencies funded by the County.

Anderson was a driving force, along with Peg Carney (Sublette County School District No. 1) and Steve Corsi (High Country Counseling) in organizing a countywide luncheon to discuss the matter and create working relationships to learn more about the services and what is needed here to create a System of Care.

Th e Sublette County System of Care will be a coordinated network of community-based services and supports organized to meet the challenges faced in the area. The system is not a provider, but rather an outlook on what services are needed and how they should be off ered and delivered.

“My task from the county commissioners involves seeing what ‘bang for the buck’ they are getting from the agencies that the county provides some funding to … looking at measurable outcomes and making sure they aren’t funding the same thing in more than one way and at the same time,” Anderson said. “This goes back to knowing all the players and what they are doing. … This is an effort to ‘kill two birds’ – follow the mandate I have from the county commissioners and create something useful for service providers and citizens in our county.”

After introducing the meeting’s purpose to those in attendance – representatives of nonprofit and profit services in the county, school districts, Department of Family Services, government and justice – the table opened to all present to list some of the needs going unmet in the county. A long list followed but the important topics hit on included family planning, safe haven locations, homelessness, public transportation, training programs, legal aid and equality of services provided for the north and south ends of the county.

The meeting, Anderson said, clarified that a “System of Care” would be good for the county to have, to provide a cohesive framework for diff erent services and for those looking to coordinate those services to come find the information needed.

“(The meeting) helped some agencies learn who is doing what, meet their counterparts and see things they didn’t know existed in Sublette County,” Anderson said.

The next step, she added, will be to host another meeting where all interested parties can once again get together and discuss what is needed in Sublette County.

“(The next step will be) identifying all the possible players and inviting them to the table at the next meeting in January,” Anderson said.

The group plans to meet monthly, starting with the January meeting. For more information on the System of Care and what it means for the county or if you provide a service in Sublette County and wish to become involved as a participant, contact Anderson at 367-2300.