Medical and mental health reports highlighted the Lyon County Commission’s weekly action session Thursday morning.
This included the annual report from Crosswinds Counseling and Wellness presented by CEO Amanda Cunningham, which showed increases in services, staffing and patients over the past year. To be specific, Cunningham reported a 17 percent increase in services, a 12 percent increase in new staffing and a 14 percent increase in clients served.
Cunningham attributes much of the increase to Crosswinds’ change in care model over the past year.
Cunningham also says they have seen an increase in the need for crisis services, which she believes are “unintended consequences” of reducing stigma surrounding mental health as well as lingering impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic and other significant life stressors. The organization also reported a better than $106,000 total in grant allocations for the previous year, with a total revenue of just over $20 million.
As she looks ahead to the future, Cunningham says early intervention will continue to be a major focus for the agency to help reduce the potential for an escalation in crises.
As for major challenges moving forward, Cunningham says a lot of cuts being seen at the Federal level could very well trickle down to the state and eventually local levels. In other business on Thursday, commissioners received the quarterly update from CareArc, which showed the health clinic has been very busy in recent months, according to Executive Director Renee Hively.
A new addition to the update from CareArc Thursday was a report from Women, Infants and Children (WIC) provided by coordinator Diana Moore. WIC is described as a federally funded “health promotion program” that serves children from birth to age five that provides personalized nutrition counseling, nutritious foods, referrals for family services and breastfeeding support.
Moore says having the opportunity to share information on the program with county leadership was an important opportunity.
Like other departments within CareArc, Moore says WIC is rather busy at this time as they are in the midst of a “baby boom,” but also stated their service numbers tend to “ebb and flow” regularly.
In separate matters Thursday, commissioners approved Lyon County Appraiser Ryan Janzen to attend the IAAO Conference in Orlando, Florida, the travel expenses for which Janzen will pay for himself. The Lyon County Commission is set to reconvene for its regular action meeting next Thursday at 9 am inside of the Lyon County Courthouse Commission Chambers.
