Fairfax County wants the public to gauge the quality of its mental health service, part of an overall review of the area’s community services board.
The county this week opened an anonymous survey, available online at fairfaxcounty.gov/beemancommission, aimed at patients, their family members and service providers. It focuses on how the agency promotes recovery from mental illness, according to the county.
The results will aid the work of the Josiah H. Beeman Commission, a panel convened by the Board of Supervisors in fall 2006 to review the practices of the Fairfax County-Falls Church Community Services Board.
When the commission was created, the agency, which provides mental-health, mental-retardation and substance-abuse services, was facing heavy caseloads that were stretching staff too thin, officials said.
The commission plans to have draft recommendations ready in the spring, and a final report prepared by the summer, said BrianWorthy, a Fairfax County spokesman.
The review comes as governments across the state – as well as the state itself – are seeking to reform mental-health service in the wake of the April 16 Virginia Tech shootings, when mentally ill gunman Sueng-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty before taking his own life.
The work of Beeman Commission, however, predated the massacre.
