The Health and Human Services Committee of the DeKalb County Board met on Monday, August 6, 2007 @ 6:30p.m. in the Administration Building’s Conference Room East.  Chairman Robert Rosemier called the meeting to order.  Members present were Pat LaVigne, Jeff Metzger, Sr., and Paul Stoddard.  Ms. Fullerton and Mr. Osborne were absent.  Others present were Sally DeFauw, Mary Olson-Ramp and Mr. Dan Templin.

APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

          Moved by Ms. LaVigne, seconded by Mr. Metzger, Sr., and it was carried unanimously to approve the minutes from July 2007.

APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA

          Moved by Ms. LaVigne, seconded by Mr. Stoddard, and it was carried unanimously to approve the agenda as presented.

PHASE I OF THE NEEDS ASSESSMENT STUDY REPORT – MR. DAN TEMPLIN

 Chairman Rosemier introduced Mr. Dan Templin of the DeKalb County Community Foundation who is approaching the committee tonight about the Phase I Report of the Needs Assessment Study.  They will be making a presentation of the report at the Farm Bureau this Wednesday morning.  There will be a Phase II and a Phase III in the future.  We probably will be asked to support Phase II also, Chairman Rosemier further explained.

Mr. Templin said that the human services initiative team wanted to thank the committee and the County for their contribution to the initiative.  They began the committee about two years ago with local human and health service funding agencies who saw an opportunity to create a baseline to assist in measuring the quality of life in our community. He said that Ms. Mary Olson-Ramp, DeKalb County Community Services Director and the United Way saw that they needed an updated Needs Assessment for DeKalb County and approached the other organizations represented in the group about the idea.  The organizations represented in this group are: the City of DeKalb, DeKalb County Community Services, DeKalb County Community Mental Health Board, DeKalb County Community Foundation, and Kishwaukee United Way. They used the United Way’s “State of Caring” index to begin with. 

What emerged is a general goal, which is to consistently and measurably improve the quality of life for people in DeKalb County and to encourage innovative solutions to our communities’ human service needs.

They also discovered that there were three issues that emerged from the discussions.  They are the update of a needs assessment, are there overlapping services from the local funding agencies in the County and looking at quality of life issues.  Phase I would look at these issues and then they would present a report, which is why he is here tonight.

          They began with a Focus Group to identify key issues affecting human services.  They held the meeting on December 7, 2006.  They had 60 participants who attended the meeting Mr. Bob Gleeson Director of the Regional Development Institute of Northern Illinois University facilitated the meeting.  The question that he asked everyone was what are the key issues that will be affecting human services in the next three to five years in DeKalb County are?

Page 5 of the power point presentation (on file in the County Board Office and the Community Services Department) reflects the findings of the Focus Group’s Summary and Prioritization List.  The first three issues received the most votes.  Those are:  Access and Affordability of Health Care Services (28 votes); Affordable Housing (21 votes); and Public Safety (21 votes).

Phase II will be some sort of needs assessment.  They will continue to do focus group sessions with key groups of people around the human service issues and providers of human services.  There is some interest in the group where they still want to do a good old fashioned needs assessment survey where the participants will rank the issues they feel are important.

Phase III will deal with Strategic Planning, where the team will take all of the information of the first two stages and do some strategic planning around what the key issues are.

          Mr. Templin said that DeKalb Community Foundation will take all of the information gathered from this study and see what they can do.  He, personally, would like the Foundation to select one issue that they can tackle head-on for a 3-5 year timeframe.

          Ms. LaVigne said that she would like to see a matching fund set up.

          Ms. Olson-Ramp said that if a need turns up that affects senior citizens, then the Health and Human Services Committee may want to take a look at it when doing the Senior Tax Levy.

          Ms. Olson-Ramp said that there are so far 100 people that have signed up for the meeting this Wednesday morning for the Quality of Life Report.

          Ms. Olson-Ramp then highlighted some pages in the Quality of Life Report (attached to these minutes).  She said that page 6 through 10 in the report is a summary of what is going on in DeKalb County.  Page 11 starts the Quality of Life Assessment.

          Before adjourning, Ms. Olson-Ramp said that she would officially be changing her name professionally to Mrs. Mary Ramp because she has recently been married and will be emailing and notifying people about this.  So when people start getting emails and letters from a Mary Ramp they will know who they are from.

ADJOURNMENT        

          Moved by Mr. Metzger, Sr., seconded by Ms. LaVigne, and it was carried unanimously to adjourn the meeting.

                                                Respectfully submitted by,

                                                ____________________________________

                                                 Chairman Robert Rosemier

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Mary C. Supple, Secretary