April 5, 2019

About 50 people representing a cross-section of agencies in Southeast Missouri met Friday in Poplar Bluff to have a “heart-to-heart” discussion about what can be done to better help children and families. “We want to hear from you,” said Julia Adami, Great Circle vice president, home and community-based services. “We want to have a heart-to-heart discussion. How’s it going? What can we do better?”...

About 50 people representing a cross-section of agencies in Southeast Missouri met Friday in Poplar Bluff to have a “heart-to-heart” discussion about what can be done to better help children and families.

“We want to hear from you,” said Julia Adami, Great Circle vice president, home and community-based services. “We want to have a heart-to-heart discussion. How’s it going? What can we do better?”

Adami said the roundtable — “listening with a purpose” — was about collaboration.

Great Circle, she said, has no desire to “do it all. … It takes a community.”

Representing that community during the ensuring discussion were law enforcement, juvenile, school and behavioral health officials, as well as other child advocacy agencies.

Topics discussed under the “what’s going well” category included: more businesses and jobs; widening of Highway 67 North for safer travel and more access; strong community partnerships coming together to help; homegrown collaborations; and varying demographics regionally.

The issues facing Southeast Missouri, according to the discussion, include: poverty and unemployment, especially in the Bootheel; lack of affordable housing and infrastructure; substance abuse (heroin); mental illness/suicide; culture of low expectations; and infant mortality.

Adami said she felt the roundtable discussion went “extremely well. I wish we would have had more time obviously.

“We thought a half hour was OK; it could have been an hour. We were just touching surfaces. We had really hoped to go deeper, but we really ran out of time.”

The roundtable, she said, was a place to start.

“We want to be as collaborative as we can throughout the southeast region, and that begins with communication and understanding and getting to know who the players are,” Adami explained.

Great Circle officials, Adami said, felt April, which is child abuse prevention month, and Friday’s “Go Blue” day were a “good opportunity to have a discussion in the community” about children and families.

What Adami took away was that she saw a “true interest. People really are willing to talk through their struggles as they work in this field” and talk about “ways to collaborate. …

“I have no doubt everyone in the room wants to see a solution, but before we can get there we have to understand the process.”

Many of the topics discussed, she said, are happening across the nation.

“We’re seeing it in pockets … I’ve heard a lot about industry being pulled, then people leaving and it’s really ghost towns.

“People become hopeless. When you’re hopeless, I think you spiral in a really negative way.”

Unfortunately, she said, many of those have children and what’s happening also impacts them.

That scenario, she said, is not unique to Southeast Missouri.

Adami said she wanted to get a “keen sense” of what services were available in Southeast Missouri.

“I think there are things there (but) I don’t know how they’re organized,” Adami said. “That’s why I want to know. Are they collaborating? Are they looking at federal money? … ”

Collaborating, according to Adami, is something Great Circle does well.

“It’s probably why we’ve been able to grow so much, and we want to be a partner,” Adami said. “We don’t want to be the only agency providing services. We know we can’t do it all. We absolutely want people to join in.”

Sometimes, she said, there is a duplication of services, which OK; however, that is also why communication is so important.

Friday’s discussion, Adami said, brought a great “smorgasbord” of people to the table.

Great Circle is one of Missouri’s largest nonprofit providers of mental health services for children and families.

In November 2017, it merged with the Ozark Family Resource Agency and now provides a women’s crisis center in Doniphan and the only emergency youth shelter in Southeast Missouri. The nine-bed Poplar Bluff facility is available for children in crisis situations and for children in foster care.

The roundtable, according to Michael Turner, program director/forensic interview specialist in Poplar Bluff, provided an opportunity for Great Circle to showcase its services to “remind our partners we’re here to be a partner and here to provide these services.”

Turner said a lot of what Great Circle does is based on referrals from other agencies, and the “same thing with them, they refer to us.”

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