Suicide Prevention Coalition Meeting

October 21, 2015

Follow up from last month’s meeting:

  • Parent Education: Strengthening Families class will begin in January. It will be offered concurrently in both English and Spanish in the Central community.
  • Still working on the details for a suicide prevention component to these classes.
  • Resource Cards
  • Angel Pairan: Dallas PD now has cards and they are on their way to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office as well.
  • Doug Gouge: Independence PD, Monmouth PD, and thanks to a school connection Oregon State Police have received the cards as well.
  • Anne Hodney suggested that the cards may be more effective if they are given to the resource officers in the West Salem Schools instead of trying to get them to the whole Salem Police Department. She volunteered to take this project on.
  • Angel Pairan invited April from Dallas Fire Department to meetings
  • Doug Gouge will reach out to the Battle Buddy program to try to get representation for the Veteran community at the meetings.
  • Job postings
  • Loren Depping is working with Holly at Goodwill Job Connections to get information about Northwest Human Services on call positions to people looking for work. Janell would also like a contact to send the information directly to. Currently NW Human Services posts information through the employment office.
  • It was also suggested that the information be sent out through the Suicide Prevention Coalition email list as well as the Service Integration email list.

Successes:

  • Resource card distribution has been a huge success, over 600 cards have been distributed to law enforcement and community partners.
  • New members have been invited to the coalition including representation from Dallas Fire, Polk County Juvenile Department, and Monmouth PD.
  • ASIST training is coming back to Polk County!
  • November 18-19
  • $70 charge, which is a 60% discount to the usual $150 fee.
  • Still working on a location, once this is determined information will be sent out to the coalition
  • Doug Gouge has applied for two different funding opportunities to support the work of the coalition
  • The first grant has been submitted and we are waiting to hear whether or not we will receive it.
  • This will give us the ability to have a training budget to train facilitators who can then provide more regular training throughout the county.
  • A letter of intent has been submitted to Salem Health about another funding opportunity
  • This funding would not be available until around January.
  • It could potentially fund a part time staff person to support the coalition.

Future meetings:

  • We would like to see more people attending the meetings and are looking for suggestions about how to get more people to come.
  • Mornings may be a better time to meet. Afternoons in the middle of the week can be hard to make.
  • Suggestion for the 4th Wednesday around 9:30 was made
  • Target meeting times around when key members may be more likely to meet
  • Bring snacks!
  • Move locations? Alternate between locations

Question for follow up next month:

  • Is there a local trauma texting line?
  • Alinna and Beth will look through notes from conference about something they may have heard.
  • Anne Hodney will check in with training facilitator to see if she can get more information.

Sub-committees:

  • In order to better address the identified gaps we would like to break into subcommittees to focus attention on 5 different areas:
  • Children and Families
  • Training
  • Special Populations
  • Health and Wellness
  • Outreach, Marketing, and Funding
  • Each subcommittee will have goals and clear expectations to be working toward.
  • Personal invitations should be sent to people who would be key players on each committee.
  • People who were at the Coalition meeting were asked to identify which subcommittees they would be interested in participating in.
  • Children and Families
  • Heather Smith
  • Anne Hodney
  • Loren Depping
  • Beth Freese
  • Rene Dionne
  • Training
  • Angel Pairan
  • Janell W.
  • Heather Smith
  • Rene Dionne
  • Special Populations
  • Beth Freese
  • Matthew Stevenson
  • Angel Pairan
  • Health and Wellness
  • Alinna Ghavami
  • Debby Davis
  • Angel Pairan
  • Outreach, Marketing, and Funding
  • Stephanie Gilbert
  • Heather Smith
  • Anne Hodney

Next Meeting:

  • The next meeting will focus on building a structure and expectations for the subcommittees