Notes From My Knapsack 3-18-07
Jeff Gill

Spring Cleaning Means Planning, Too

Our Community Blueprint just arrived. The United Way has been
working for much of the last year to take an innovative
approach to gathering data in Licking County, and the results
are worth the wait.

My only qualification is that this is less a blueprint than the
architect’s notes from a series of client meetings. No, I’m not
being obtuse (which I’ll admit I often am). This isn’t the
plan, or even the clear outlines of a plan. What we’ve got is
even more important to get first, before you start drawing
lines on a sheet of paper and then debating whether to move
that line a little over here, or a bit over there.

This "Community Blueprint" is meant to give us all the clearest
possible perspective on what Licking County needs to a) stay as
a good a place to live and raise a family as it is in so many
ways, and b) where we need to improve matters, especially for
children and the most vulnerable.

The comparative survey is most intriguing to me, but that may
be because I live and work in many of the other statistics so
much they don’t catch me the same way.

Questions were asked of "key informants," or community
leadership type folk, whether they’re elected, or occupying
jobs and positions that give them a lead role; these same
questions were asked then of a random telephone survey across
the county. Each group was asked about how common certain
issues were off of a list, and to rank how "serious" they were
relative to each other. That last was done in the phone survey
by asking if the issue was in your household (and they defined
household however they defined it, which makes sense to me).

Leaders around Licking County said "lack of affordable health
insurance, affordable dental care, affordable medical care,
alcohol and/or drug abuse among young people, and alcohol
and/or drug abuse among adults" were their top five issues they
saw, in that order. But asked to say how seriousness ranked
them, they said "alcohol and/or drug abuse among adults,
affordable health insurance, affordable medical care,
unemployment, and shortage of affordable housing" were the top
five of concern.

Now, read back through those two lists of five, and think about
how the priorities shifted. Health insurance stays high, but
the immediate impact of drug/alcohol abuse made it a higher
concern. Unemployment and affordable housing are a little less
visible to folks, even in leadership, but they bump dental care
and youth drug and alcohol use when asked to consider
seriousness. (I wonder if underemployment vs. unemployment is a
distinction that folks stop to make, but that’s a matter of
interpretation.)

Now go to the households – randomly selected for phone surveys
across the county, remember. Their top five "issues" were "lack
of affordable health insurance, affordable dental insurance,
affordable dental care, affordable medical care, and lack of
jobs." Hmmmm.

And asked "in my household"? The list went this way: "mental
illness or emotional issues among adults, lack of affordable
dental insurance, affordable health insurance, affordable
dental care, and affordable medical care." Make the question
personal, and mental health issues and . . . dental issues:
those are the "top of mind" concerns.

You can see how this doesn’t exactly give us the blueprint for
breaking ground and building new capacity in our social safety
net right now, but it does start us down the path of planning
more sensibly. Is dental health a major community issue? If it
effects your ability to get jobs because you can’t sleep for
toothache, barely eat decent food and are all woozy from that
since you can’t chew, and may self-medicate, um,
"inappropriately" to deal with the pain . . . uh, yeah.

Mental health issues in Licking County, thanks to Moundbuilders
Guidance Center, the Community Mental Health and Recovery
Board, The Main Place, and Mental Health America of Licking
County, have some strong advocates and points of assistance.
Churches offer counseling, and schools work with many programs
and approaches to support healthy habits of mind beyond just
studiousness.

But when our local households put "mental illness or emotional
issues among adults" as the top item of concern "in my
household," that puts the matter in a slightly different
light.

There will be more to consider out of this comprehensive study of our county, and we’ll be getting some plans drawn up soon. Thanks to Chairperson Cheryl Snyder, staffers Donna Carpenter, Sylvia Friel, and everyone at Licking County United Way for giving us such useful architect’s notes, and see their website for the whole deal: http://www.lickingcountycommunityblueprint.com.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; tell him about your blueprints for a better
future at knapsack77@gmail.com.