The Putnam County Family Connection Collaborative (PCFCC) held its March meeting last Wednesday morning, when community members in the healthcare sector, school system, local businesses, and more met in the reception hall of The Plaza Arts Center in Eatonton.
Adam Swymer, regional manager of Georgia Family Connection Partnership (GaFCP), began the meeting with introductions and approval of last month’s meeting minutes. The goal for this meeting was to review the Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) Collaborative Annual Plan and hear from guest speaker Community Health Care Coordinator Juanita Norris of the Oconee Center for Behavioral Health (OCBH).
“Oconee Center for Behavioral Health is a community services board and provider of community-based mental health, addictive disease, and developmental disability services,” Norris explained. “For over 40 years [they] have provided evidence-based treatment with proven positive outcomes to children, teens, adults, and families in the communities [they] serve.”
Norris works with Baldwin, Hancock, Jackson, Jasper, Putnam, Washington, and Wilkinson counties for the Better Health and Fitness Together program. It is funded through a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration and its goal is to increase access to integrated and evidence-based substance use disorder services along the spectrum of care.
Norris also discussed another OCBH program.
“We have a thing that’s called Project Echo,” she said. “And with Project Echo, it is where we get all our consortium members from each county and we have someone that is trained, certified in different areas, whether it’s in substance abuse, whether it’s in services that meet families that have substance abuse in there to help them get resources. We do coaching and training for that. We do a spectrum of care. They’re integrated in evidence-based service.
“My job is to set up where we get clients into the system, get them referred to our partner or county, and then they do screenings for them. It’s just one of the things that we’re helping them with now is we notice that rural communities have a hard time getting to the Milledgeville office,” she continued. “So, we’re working with communities to figure out ways that they can come together to do transportation.”
Education and awareness about the disease of addiction also was discussed at length. Norris said she hoped that Putnam County in the future can utilize the help and resources that OCBH can provide for mental health and drug addiction.
The next order of business was reviewing the FY25 Collaborative Annual Plan. Swymer distributed the plan to those in attendance so they could look it over. Topics such as parent education and mentoring, which were talked about earlier this year, were included in the plan.
“It is more about fleshing it out and more about understanding what the need is and what the collaborative can contribute without adding something that’s a duplication,” Swymer said.
The plan also included ideas like partaking in cross-county collaboration, adding committees, and working on communications. “Doing newsletters, email updates, social media, and possibly a shared calendar of some sort,” Swymer suggested.
For programs and services, the only addition was a resource fair that was approved by the committee.
All PCFCC meetings are open to any community members interested in learning more about what resources are available and working together to improve outcomes for children and families. The next meeting is scheduled for April 17 at noon, again at The Plaza Arts Center.
For more information, visit online at putnam.gafcp.org.