(Spirit Lake)– County officials are still waiting to see how a realignment of mental health services in Iowa is going to work. A state mandate is going to result in some major changes in the makeup of mental health regions in the coming months. Dickinson county currently belongs to the Sioux Rivers region. Supervisor Kim Wermersen is the county’s representative on that board. He says they’re still waiting to see who will head up each region under the new configuration…
“And last I heard there are about 14 different groups applying for that leadership role so it’s going to be interesting. A lot of them are trying to get at least two regions that they will be leaders of and I think the state kind of likes to have fewer people than all seven, so we’ll see what happens. It’s kind of a trying time for everybody because as you know in our Sioux Rivers Region, four of the counties would go west; us and Emmet would go east.”
Wermersen says there will also be some big changes on how the boards are made up…
“The boards will obviously look different, we’ll go from six to at least 14. I’m not sure how all of that will be. I know county-wise we don’t have a lot of control any more over those decisions other than we basically are kind of sharing information.”
Wermersen gave the update during today’s (Tues.) Board of Supervisors meeting.
