The Sedgwick County Commission on Oct. 22 unanimously proclaimed October as Disability Employment Awareness Month and approved an agreement with the National Center for START Services to provide training, consultation and direct services for people with co-occurring intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) and mental-health conditions.

The proclamation and contract were approved during the commission’s regular meeting at the Sedgwick County Courthouse. Chairman Ryan Beatty moved to approve the proclamation “as read,” and later moved approval of the START Services agreement; both motions passed on roll-call votes of 5-0.

Why it matters: Commissioners and presenters said the actions aim to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities and reduce repeat emergency responses and hospital use among people with IDD who also experience mental-health crises. Jeanette, a county staff member who described the Project SEARCH partnership, said the county offers internships to help students with IDD transition into employment and that by the end of the school-year internships many participants “will find what they wanna do and hopefully actually be employed by the time the program is finished.”

Colin McKinney, identified in the meeting as CEO of Starkey, urged continuing and expanding supports that lead to jobs. “As we look at the population of individuals with an identified disability, it's probably about one-third as many of those individuals find employment as members of the general population,” McKinney said. He introduced employers and job-placement staff at the meeting and emphasized the need to raise the profile of hiring people with disabilities.

Jeanette described the START (Systemic, Therapeutic, Assessment, Resources, and Treatment) model and presented local data used to justify the contract. “People that are in mental health crisis that with IDD that go to the emergency room have a 74 percent recidivism rate,” she said. She told commissioners the county saw roughly 400 police calls to IDD sites in a year and cited one group home with about 80 police calls in a single year as evidence the current system “is not working for folks with intellectual developmental disabilities.”

County staff said START Services offers evidence-based assessment tools, staff training and community linkages; the model has been implemented in multiple states. Jeanette said START will both carry caseloads and work with local providers and institutions “to work with them to how you can work with this population better, what needs to happen, developing resources that don't exist, and developing linkage agreements so that we can all partner to actually get the results that we all would like to see.”

Commissioners voiced support for Project SEARCH — a school-business internship program — and for expanding services that help people with dual diagnoses access treatment and employment. Austin English, owner of Prost German restaurant, and Brandon Butterfield, an employee, both spoke briefly about employing workers referred through Starkey.

The commission’s consent agenda included formal approval of the START Services agreement as item I. The motion to approve item I passed unanimously on a roll-call vote.

The commission paused after the proclamation for photos and returned to complete the meeting, with members praising the county’s partnerships with Starkey, Wichita Public Schools and other providers.

Ending: Commissioners asked staff to continue implementing START Services and to report back as the new contract is rolled out. No additional funding amounts were specified in the meeting record provided to the commission during discussion.