AUBURN - For Katharine O'Connell, taking on the role of interim director of mental health for Cayuga County felt like coming home again.

O'Connell, who started her role Sept. 1, was born and raised in Moravia and attended Mount Carmel High School, now home to Seward Elementary School. She still has family living in the area, she said.

But it also meant taking on the challenge of getting the troubled county mental health services back in order, something O'Connell is extremely good at doing.

“One of my professional fortes is helping turn around organizations and helping organizations constructively respond to necessary and needed changes,” she said. “I love the challenge of working with organizational change and innovation. It's frustrating at times and it's also very exciting because there's an opportunity working with others to shape and mold practices and services so that they're top-notch, cutting-edge, compassionate, quality care for people in the community.”

Since the late 1980s, O'Connell has worked in executive-level positions, helping to manage, improve and grow organizations like the Rape Crisis Center of Syracuse and the Onondaga Pastoral Counseling Center Inc., now known as the Brownell Center. She helped grow the budget at the crisis center from $240,000 to more than $1 million in her 12 years there and she realized that OPCC could not survive as a free-standing agency without any government support.

“If we had not gone down that road (of integration), we would have closed the doors. 1,200 people would have been without care, 40 people out of work and the community would have lost the capacity, meaning the license, because at that point, the state wasn't issuing new licenses,” she said.

This year, the Brownell Center moved into a new facility.

O'Connell decided to come to Cayuga County and work as the interim director because of her personal connection to the county, the challenge of the work to be done and her deep and abiding commitment to quality care, she said. At the time, county leaders and the Community Services Board were candid about the problems the county was faced with, O'Connell said.

“It was both the challenge and (realizing) it's Auburn, a place that I have a history in,” she said.

In her 4.5 months on the job, O'Connell has been doing a lot of observing and listening to employees, consumers and stakeholders.

“I don't think I had specific priorities other than trying to figure out the lay of the land,” she said.

The biggest challenge so far has been people's resistance to change, which O'Connell attributes to human nature. However, in her short time here, O'Connell has implemented some key changes, like the development of a different crisis model.

As part of that model, the clinic no longer uses the hospital's emergency room to do psychiatric evaluations during the day and effective Jan. 1, they will not be using it after-hours either, O'Connell said. For years, the model for crisis services response in the county included going to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation performed by staff from the clinic. This is not done in other areas, O'Connell said.

People will still be taken to the emergency room if it's appropriate but the clinic's staff will not be doing the psychiatric evaluations as they have in the past. Instead, the hospital's own staff will do the assessment, O'Connell said.

Another change taking place Jan. 1 is after-hours calls to the mental health clinic will be rolled to Contact Telephone Counseling Hotline, where trained people can assist with crisis intervention. In addition to having Contact answer the after-hours calls, the clinic will have on-call therapists available for consultation and administrative staff will also be on-call to assist the therapists

“It's a much better system in that sense so that we are creating a proper crisis service model. It's about providing a crisis response that is appropriate and helpful when people really need it,” O'Connell said. “Every good crisis model is based on backup so that you always have someone available if there's a need.”

O'Connell is also looking at every component of the organization, such as training, billing and the new building.

O'Connell believes that overall, the reaction and feedback has been good but she realizes that for some people, the change is difficult.

As of Thursday, O'Connell indicated she is interested in continuing in her role as director of mental health and director of community services. Contract negotiations with the county are still pending and O'Connell will need the approval of the Legislature before her official title is finalized.

“The work is interesting, there's a lot of good things to be done,” O'Connell said. “And hopefully, we can get a lot of those things accomplished in a timely manner.”

Staff writer Gitana Mirochnik can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or gitana.mirochnik@lee.net