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The focus of the 2000 forum was mental health and how it affects people of all ages. It was painted out that North Carolina had not looked at its mental health system in 30 years, and despite an increase in knowledge, service delivery was stuck in the past. There were over 140 participants at the forum. They worked on finding ways to improve access to services for all age groups. Some of the recommendations for young children included equity of access to services; insuring that there is an early collaborative effort between schools, mental health, DSS, and the Health Department; increasing schools' capacity to deal with mental health issues; and automatic mental health treatment services for children. For adolescents, the focus was on providing after-school services, services for youth growing up in violence, out-of-home placements, crisis services, adolescent substance abuse, and building strong partnerships between schools and mental health services. For young adults, there is a need for affordable housing (single room occupancy units), support services for mentally ill young adults that want to live independently, educating the community about what it can do to help, and providing publicity about available services. For persons in mid-life, there is a need for more safe, supportive affordable housing, an increase in unrestricted funding, a full range of mental health services for victims of domestic violence and sexual assaults, improved transportation alternatives, and more community crisis teams. For the elderly, there is a need far more accessibility of mental health services, respite care for care givers, universal health coverage, fragmentation of services in the County's senior centers, and the need to use an interdisciplinary wellness model. There is also inequality of services in different regions of the County. A recommendation was made to improve access to services for the mentally ill by creating a mental health task force to further study the complex issues. The task force should include representatives from schools, health departments, DSS, OPC area program, County department heads, transportation services, the Department on Aging, Housing and Community Development, and the Sheriff's Department. The task force will address areas such as equity of access to services, crisis intervention, management, and the impact that all forms of violence have on mental health, the continuum of care, appropriate housing and transportation, collaboration and oversight of existing services, and inadequate and/or inflexible funding streams. Chair Jacobs made reference to elder abuse and asked that HSAC discuss whether elder abuse should be considered at the same time as child abuse. Chair Jacobs said that his concern is haw to take the next step and implement the recommendations once the HSAC symposia are done. He asked the Manager to consider the recommendations and direct them to the appropriate parts of County government. e. Board of Social Services Dee Gamble, Chair of the Orange County Board of Social Services, thanked the Board of County Commissioners for their support during the time they recruited and hired their new Director of DSS due to the death of the farmer director Marti Pryor-Cook. They are very pleased with the present Director of Social Services, Nancy Coston. She said that the proposed goal statement as distributed is to implement a public awareness campaign to address the growing incidence of child abuse/neglect in Orange County. She made reference to the D's and F's the entire State received in 1999 in child abuse prevention from the North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute and the Institute of Medicine. She said that the focus needs to be on child abuse prevention in an effort to turn around this level of abuse. They want to engage the entire community in raising the level of awareness of the issues related to child abuse. This will be accomplished through several activities. April is Child Abuse Prevention Month. They would like to do a countywide campaign during this month to raise awareness. Another big event could be in conjunction with the Human Services Advisory Commission's September meeting. Smart Start will also have the annual family day in May, and she hopes that they would be willing to take this issue on and raise awareness and find out what could be done differently. The Board of Social Services is not asking for mare money, but they would appreciate the County Commissioners' leadership and presence in any of the community-wide meetings. Commissioner Brown said that she supports this new goal.