Mental Health Public Assembly

Thursday, Nov. 17, 7-8:30 pm

Binkley Baptist Church Fellowship Hall, 1712 Willow Dr., Chapel Hill, NC 27514

*We encourage everyone to attend in-person, but a Zoom livestream will also be available. 

Our Latinx community is in a mental health resource crisis -- it's time to come together as a community to respond. Community leaders will propose specific solutions to representatives from Alliance Health, the company that administers Orange County public mental health funds.

Virtual Instructions:

We strongly encourage you to attend in person for a greater impact, but a Zoom Webinar livestream will be available.

Use this link to join via Zoom Webinar at 7 pm: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81473275527?pwd=SE1nZnh5R0Ezc0xzWDFFSkhDQ0hZQT09

Passcode: 067095

- Please log on by 6:50 pm to connect to translation. The Assembly will be conducted primarily in Spanish, with simultaneous translation provided if you connect to Zoom's translation feature. Please note that the translation does not work on Chromebooks -- but laptops, phones, and iPads will all work.

- Sound will be off until the event begins.

- All Zoom Webinar participants will be automatically muted for the entire Assembly. (You won’t see a “mute” option, but rest assured you are muted.)

In-Person Instructions:

- Please plan to arrive early so that you can get set up with your headset and be seated before 7 pm. We will start on time and end on time. Since the Assembly will be conducted primarily in Spanish, all non-Spanish-speakers will be provided headsets for simultaneous interpretation.

- Translation: We aim to have enough headsets for all non-Spanish-speakers, but we invite you to bring your phone's headphones and a charged phone, in the event that we go over capacity and need some non-Spanish-speakers to listen to the Zoom translation on their phones.

- Please bring a mask. We are asking all participants to be masked, and will also have extra masks on-hand.

- Parking: See map here. Parking is available around Binkley Baptist Church, including a single-file line of cars on the entrance road, and overflow parking immediately adjacent in University Place (by the former K&W), with a sidewalk connector to Binkley. Fellowship Hall entrance is facing the former K&W.  

Mental Health Public Assembly Agenda

* Find specific proposals below.

1) Welcome, Performance y Danza Azteca, and Overview (15 min)

2) Mental Health testimonies (15 min)

3) Proposals (10 min)

4) Responses from elected officials, followed by specific responses from Alliance Health representatives (30 min)

• Statement from Rep./Sen.-elect Graig Meyer, read by Daphne Quinn
• Orange County Commissioners (Amy Fowler, Jamezetta Bedford, Sally Greene, Jean Hamilton)
• Alliance Health Chief Operating Officer Sean Schreiber

5) Closing (5 min)

What will be our specific proposals?

Leaders will propose that Alliance Health invest in funding the goals that the Mental Health team identified after a year of careful research with local providers and stakeholders, and deep community listening:

1) Creation (and maintenance of) an accurate and user-friendly guide to mental health services for members of the Latino community.

2) Increase group therapy options (including in trusted settings like religious communities).

3) Training for existing Spanish-speaking community leaders/community health workers to become certified to provide basic mental health interventions, to diversify mental health service options.

More info: A very strong Community Health Worker program, housed at UNC Greensboro has been piloted and evaluated with funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, and is expanding statewide.

4) Ensure Orange County's future Crisis/Diversion Center has bilingual staff and culturally responsive services.

More info: A task force is planning this Crisis/Diversion Center, with plans to begin construction in 2024.

5) El Futuro (leading and essentially only local bilingual long-term therapy option, located in Durham) returning to a physical presence in Orange County.

More info: A decade ago, the previous equivalent of Alliance, Cardinal, caused El Futuro to close its Carrboro office by preventing El Futuro from treating patients who did not have insurance.

6) Investment in training and retaining bilingual therapists -- growing the "pipeline."