A Palm Beach County social justice organization is part of a growing network dedicated to improving access to mental health services.
PEACE members are focused on community issues including the county’s teams of medical professionals and social workers who step in when severely mentally ill people are in crisis.
The faith-based organization contends that the teams are severely understaffed.
Last week, about 300 members of PEACE heard from state and county leaders who said they share their goal.
“I think our biggest takeaway is that we have people in Palm Beach County on all levels wanting to address this,” PEACE associate organizer Megan Sease told Stet News after the organization’s Oct. 27 Community Problems Assembly.
READ MORE: Palm Beach County police agencies join crisis mental health care program
PEACE has appealed to the state Department of Children and Families to expand the teams, and now members are moving on to the state Legislature.
State Sens. Mack Bernard and Lori Berman, both Democrats from Palm Beach County, committed to the group that they will pursue legislation to increase the staffing of Palm Beach County’s mental health crisis teams.
Coming up: Air traffic control
PEACE leaders recently connected with the Health Care District, which is proposing a reconfiguration of mental health care in Palm Beach County.
Dr. Courtney Phillips, the district’s vice president of behavioral health, shared with PEACE members the district’s plans for a mental health crisis stabilization center to open by 2029. She described it as kind of an air traffic control to help people manage their illness. The budget for the project is $145 million.
Phillips emphasized there are places to turn now, including the Health Care District’s outpatient mental health clinic in Mangonia Park, which is open from 7 am to 7 pm seven days a week.
“You do not need to go to the hospital,” Phillips said. “You do not need to know if the loved one you’re taking care of, or yourself, needs anything. You just have to show up. And we’ll figure that out. That’s going to be the ethos of our new facility.”
PEACE’s reach
PEACE was founded in 1991 and is made up of 25 congregations representing a dozen belief systems in Palm Beach County. Each year, it calls out leaders to support its priorities.
For the first time, members will travel to Tallahassee to lobby for the expansion of the mental health crisis teams. Forty members will board a bus bound for the state capital in mid-November.
But mental health improvements are not all PEACE will pursue. Added to the docket for the group is immigration, the assemblage decided on Oct. 27.
“I think people have been frustrated,” PEACE organizer Paige Shortsleeves told Stet News. “Our members have gone to protests on their own. They’re asking ‘What do I do now? How do I get connected now?’ We’ve had a lot of members become part of PEACE because it’s, ‘How can I keep doing something?’”
The decision to focus on social justice in immigration follows months of house meetings where members shared stories about community issues they want PEACE to tackle. They also considered a focus on health care and the cost of living in Palm Beach County.
“We’ll use our stories to really guide what direction we go,” Shortsleeves said. “But we also will begin meeting with local nonprofits and experts and professors and organizations to see what piece of the puzzle we can address.”
The work all leads to the organization’s signature meeting each year, PEACE Nehemiah Action, where church leaders put public officials on the spot to commit to PEACE’s cause.
The meeting is scheduled for 7 pm March 24 at Jupiter First Church.
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
