When final 12 months’s behavioral well being parity invoice was signed into regulation, Janet Norris was sitting in a Bartow County jail cell.
So much has modified for her since then. After fighting dependancy for 27 years, the Cartersville resident discovered restoration by way of psychological well being court docket. She says this system saved her life, reunited her household, and set her on a path to turning into a peer specialist and dependancy counselor to assist others.
And on Tuesday, Norris joined advocates on the state Capitol – only a couple weeks shy of her one-year anniversary of sobriety – to push for extra reforms and assets for others dealing with their very own behavioral well being challenges.
“That’s why I’m right here – to be a voice of braveness for the opposite ones who can’t be and who aren’t the place I’m,” she mentioned.
Norris was among the many a whole bunch of psychological well being advocates pushing for measures that can develop the behavioral well being workforce, improve entry to companies, and broaden the state’s behavioral well being care system.
Most of the advocates wore inexperienced shirts that honored the late Home Speaker David Ralston, who made enhancing entry to behavioral well being remedy his high precedence in what would find yourself being his final legislative session.
Final 12 months’s invoice was celebrated as a significant first step towards lifting Georgia from the underside with regards to entry to psychological well being remedy.
“The best way we’re going to honor his legacy is way more than placing his identify on the again of a T-shirt,” Jeff Breedlove with the Georgia Council for Restoration mentioned Tuesday. “We’re going to move one other invoice this 12 months and one other invoice subsequent 12 months and a invoice the 12 months after that, and we’re going to make life higher for friends.”
Comply with-up measures are anticipated this session, though a few of the proposals are nonetheless taking form. Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, a Decatur Democrat, and Rep. Todd Jones, a South Forsyth Republican, mentioned Tuesday they had been engaged on a invoice.
“The work will not be accomplished,” Ralston’s successor, Home Speaker Jon Burns, mentioned Tuesday. “We nonetheless have work to do.”
An enormous element of this 12 months’s measure is anticipated to cope with the workforce scarcity that has hamstrung efforts to extend entry to remedy and companies. It’s additionally a precedence problem for Kevin Tanner, commissioner of the state Division of Behavioral Well being and Developmental Disabilities.
Tanner, who additionally leads the influential reform-minded fee, mentioned he’s pushing for higher pay for behavioral well being staff and new incentives to encourage school college students to enter the sphere.
“The actual fact is there will not be sufficient folks in our state who’re educated and able to meet the wants of Georgians who’ve or want remedy for psychological well being,” he mentioned Tuesday.
“We should retain and we should strengthen our workforce as a result of it actually is a matter of life and demise, as a result of for each vacant place is a person who can’t heal, who can’t entry hope and who can’t get better. These realities are merely unacceptable.”
Tanner mentioned he’s additionally making an attempt to get forward of the elevated pressure on state companies that’s anticipated to come back as soon as the federal authorities promotes the brand new nationwide 988 suicide prevention line.
“We should be prepared to handle the demand when it comes as a result of there must be no waitlist for folks in disaster,” Tanner mentioned.
