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Child Care Task Force: This is attachment 2b. Commissioner Foushee said that their thinking was to establish a work group to look at the challenges of providing quality childcare and how it impacts the workforce families. She said that childcare is very expensive in Orange County. They want to bring together a group of people -business owners, business leaders, daycare providers, and other stakeholders - to keep an ongoing look at what is happening and haw the business partners could be a part of solving these issues, particularly related to tuition payment. There is a need for a mechanism to keep information out there for partnerships. Commissioner Gordon said that this task force is a terrific idea. Commissioner Carey said that the objective is to increase the awareness of businesses that assume that they have no stake in this. He said that this is an opportunity to provide sustainability in what the County is doing. Chair Jacobs said that he met with Ken Broun recently about Carolina North, and this would be a perfect place to build in some child care possibilities. This is a good opportunity to set a framework of what they would like to see happen. Commissioner Halkiotis said that this is a good idea. He would like to keep in the forefront that you could send a child to UNC-Chapel Hill far fewer dollars than you can send a child to quality childcare. Outside Agencies: Jahn Link made reference to the outside agency report and said that Orange County supports non-profits, and that $1.5 million of County funds go into funding these allies of human services. He pointed out pages 5-7, which indicates those agencies that also provide direct support to the school systems. There are not many counties in the state that have this level of commitment to non-profits or outside agencies. Mental Health Reform UpdatelFunding: Commissioner Carey asked for an update about Durham County and their new agreement with the state that provides an incentive for Durham County to keep patients out of the big hospitals. He asked what was different between this model and what was promised a few years ago. OPC Area Director Judy Truitt gave an update. She said that mental health reform is changing on a daily basis and she finds it difficult to write anything that remains current for more than one day. In terms of the Secretary's proposal, for certain functions there has to be a regionalization of these functions. They now know that the area programs across the state did propose alliances and came out with 12 proposed alliances as opposed to 1 d. Also, the Division of Mental Health has indicated that they are an schedule and will announce who the lead will be in the 12 alliances by the end of January. Orange County's alliance includes Durham, Alamance, Caswell, and Rockingham Counties and what is now known as Five County {Vance, Franklin, Warren, Granville, and Halifax Counties). Of the four area programs, one of the four will be chosen to be the lead. The lead would take responsibility for the two functions of utilization review, screening triage and referral by April 1St. They were told last Friday verbally that this deadline is now fluid. It was also verbally confirmed that OPC is looking to lose $1.3 million starting in July. They have not seen this in writing. As indicated in the packet, they are moving forward with the release of RFP's for divestiture of service programs. She said that one of the basic precepts of mental health reform is to get consumers back into the community, and the expectation of reform is to downsize the hospitals and individuals would move back into their communities. As the hospitals are downsized, the money is supposed to follow. There are projections of how much we would receive and how much capacity we would be expected to build. What has happened is that we have not built the community capacity to the point where people can be moved out of the hospital. Until people