Mansfield YSB Advisory Board

Minutes

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

12:00 noon @ Mansfield Town Hall

Conf. Rm. B

PRESENT: K. Grunwald (staff), E. Mantzaris (Chair), J. Marchon (staff), K. McNamara (staff), P. Michalak (staff), F. Perrotti, Jay O’Keefe (staff),

I.Call to Order: Chair E. Mantzaris called the meeting to order at 12:05 PM. She introduced Jay O’Keefe, who will be joining the committee as a representative of the Parks & Recreation Department.

II. Approval of minutes: The minutes of the 3/17/09 and 4/14/09 meetings were approved as written.

III. Reports

Director’s Report – K.  Grunwald distributed copies of the Department’s quarterly report from January-March of 2009.  He also reminded members that the Annual Town meeting is tonight, and identified areas of the Human Service Department budget that have been reduced.

Coordinator’s Report –

· P. Michalak announced that Frank Perrotti was honored as Mansfield’s youth volunteer of the year at a recent NECASA event. Congratulations to Frank!

· P. Michalak has been reaching out to more community agencies, and talked about the recent Give & Go program at UConn (an idea originally proposed by a YSB client).  YSB clients benefitted from contributions through this program, including the Grandparents Group. This was the pilot year for the program, and hopefully it will continue beyond this year.  F. Perrotti has been helpful with delivering items.

· Staff also consulted with a janitor at UConn around the issue of cleaning out the room of a student who had committed suicide.  Staff assisted in recommending the development of a policy to handle this differently in the future. 

· Staff attended a training session on violence, and met with individuals from Hamilton-Sunstrand around developing a mentoring program to be run through the school system. 

· A presentation on the YSB was made to the Board Of Education.

· P. Michalak shared a letter from Candace Morrell about a student’s experience in the JUMP program.

IV. Old Business

   K-12 revised Vision Plan 2020 (attached): K. Grunwald explained the background of this Action Plan, stating that it was an attempt to reflect Advisory Board feedback in expanding an Action Item that came out of the strategic planning effort (Expand Youth Services).  K. McNamara suggested adding a focus on supervising social work graduate students.  Some questions were raised about how this will be used?  F. Perrotti made the point that there need to be resources brought in to make sure that these things actually happen.  E. Mantzaris stated that it needs to be clearer about who is being served.  E. Griffin asked for clarification around the role of the Grandparents Group.  How do we quantify the number of people who are potentially seeking services?  P. Michalak sees this Action Item as a start; it is important to make people aware of what the YSB is doing, and to attend the committee meeting in June to meet with the Town Manager.  Staff recently met with the resident State Trooper, who was unaware of what Youth Services does.  E. Mantzaris feels that we first need to identify what the need is.  C. Morrell feels it’s important to establish annual goals and then to report back periodically on how those goals are being met.  Data collection will support the need for expanded services.  S. Riffle suggested that each action step needs to be followed with more specific objectives and steps.  There was discussion regarding what level of detail that needs to be included in this Action Plan to provide adequate feedback to the Steering Committee?  J. Marchon feels that more detail in the Action Steps will assist the Steering Committee in determining needs and priorities.  In general committee members felt that there needs to be more detail included to educate the Steering Committee members about the scope of the services that are currently provided.  S. Riffle suggested that part of this needs to reference the continuation of existing services.  What about identifying the need to expand staff to be able to deliver these services?   

  Action items for this committee: collect data to determine the current level of services, report annually to the Town Council (YSB) to educate them about the range of services that are provided, report to the Town Manager at the June meeting around the services that are delivered, describe what staff would like to be able to provide to existing clients to serve their needs.  Table the final action plan until the June meeting.  S. Riffle suggested strategizing to get the message across to identify what is currently being provided, and what the needs are that are not being met.  Strengthen the message that a lot is done, but there is still an unmet need.    

V. New Business

  Tony Velasquez – New Member: no discussion.

Advisory Board Membership: no discussion.

VI. Other

Adjournment: the meeting adjourned at 1:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Kevin Grunwald