Faced with having to cut services for the first time in its history, the Milwaukee County Mental Health Board solidified a plan July 10 with the Finance Committee that spares three crucial service programs.
The decision comes weeks after the mental health board heard an outpouring of personal testimonies about the importance of Grand Avenue Club, Milwaukee County’s only clubhouse committed to serving people with mental health diagnoses; Impact 211, a resource directory that also operates a southeast Wisconsin crisis line; and Our Space, the nonprofit under which Parachute House, Milwaukee’s peer-run respite home, operates.
Members of the public credited these behavioral health organizations with not only keeping them out of emergency rooms, but getting them out of the house and into healthy and safe spaces to gather with other people. Those personal testimonies led board members to draft amendments that would put $759,962 into funds from the board’s reserve, which is just over $45 million…