While conversations with the entire General Assembly on the state’s vaccine plan will remain ongoing, Governor Tom Wolf’s Administration is trying to provide a mechanism for accurate, timely information sharing via a streamlined set of communicators between these two branches of state government.

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“We have a good working relationship with our legislators, and we know they are the eyes, ears, and voices for Pennsylvanians,” Gov. Wolf said. “The feedback they receive from their local communities is extremely important, particularly as the commonwealth continues to improve upon this once-in-a-generation vaccine rollout. Working with leaders from each caucus in the General Assembly, we are creating a task force to ensure collaboration and strengthen communications about the state’s vaccine plan.”

Improve conversations

According to a stl.news report, task force members will represent their caucus’s perspective and work to improve conversations aimed to focus and drive issues of importance. Wolf Administration members will serve as task force members with the subject matter expertise to listen, collaborate and provide information, answers and suggestions to solve problems in a timely manner.

Members of the task force include co-chairs Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam and Director of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Randy Padfield; for the Senate Democratic Caucus, Sen. Art Haywood; for the House Democratic Caucus, Rep. Bridget Kosierowski; for the Senate Republican Caucus, Sen. Ryan Aument; and for the House Republican Caucus, Rep. Tim O’Neal.

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The work of the Suicide Prevention Task Force is a complement to the goals and strategies surrounding the governor’s Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters initiative announced earlier this month.

Schlossberg, co-chair of the Pennsylvania House Mental Health Caucus, said the task force conducted 10 public listening sessions hosted throughout Pennsylvania.

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“We need to study all factors that lead to suicide because treating the disease is both challenging and difficult,” Schlossberg said. “I was floored to hear so many personal stories of how family members said they wish they would have identified the signs before their loved ones took their own lives.”

The task force identified the following themes in their preliminary report:

• Reduce the stigma associated with mental health, suicide and suicide attempts, which can affect people getting help.
• Resources are needed to elevate mental health as a public health issue, incentivize the integration of physical and behavioral health, and improve suicide prevention at the local level.
• Barriers exist to treatment such as cost and insurance gaps.
• Access to more detailed suicide and suicide-attempt data is needed to help policymakers make meaningful decisions.
• Addressing issues within the mental-health workforce, such as pay and barriers to entry, can improve quality of care.
• Proper resources are needed in Pennsylvania schools.
• The legislature could take direct action to prevent suicides by passing a Red Flag Law to remove access to firearms by people at risk for suicide.

In 2019, a bipartisan group of the Pennsylvania House Mental Health Caucus sent a letter to Wolf  urging him to restore funding cuts made a decade ago in order to bolster mental health service programs in Pennsylvania.

The 2012-13 budget resulted in funding for health and health services being cut by 10%, forcing counties to reallocate funding for mental health to other equally important services. This has hindered the delivery of quality community-based mental health services and destabilized people’s chances for recovery. These cuts led to:

• A reduction or elimination of mental health employment, education and/or training programs.
• Reductions to community housing and residential programs.
• A reduction in funding for psychiatric rehabilitation services.
• Funding cuts or an elimination of drop-in centers, clubhouses and warm lines.
• An exacerbation of the health and human service workforce crisis at all levels. Providers continue to have issues recruiting/retaining health and human service professionals and critically needed front-line staff.

The letter urges Wolf to increase mental health funding to restore the 10% cut and provide a 5% increase in the 2020-21 budget, and a commitment for an additional 5% increase in the 2021-22 budget. It notes strong support for the increases from county commissioners across the commonwealth and the dire concerns of mental health service providers who are struggling to deliver care to some of Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable populations. 

By: Roseann Cadau. House Democratic Communications Office

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