March 29, 2024

Community advocates help advance Children’s Mental Health Program

Children's Mental Health Program Advances — Since 2017, Mary Neubauer and Larry Loss have turned their family's tragic loss into productive advocacy for mental health in Iowa. Their son, Sergei, died by suicide at age 18 due to post-traumatic stress, anxiety and depression. In the wake of loss, Mary became a leader in advocating alongside thousands of Iowans for strengthening our state's mental health system, especially for children.

This week, she helped champion a major policy victory: passage of HF 690 on children’s mental health care services. It’s a critical effort that will help 64,000 children in Iowa who currently live with substantial functional impairment caused by mental illness, yet do not receive any mental health services. There is always more work to be accomplished — but this is a historic milestone in creating Iowa’s first children’s mental health structure for the state.

I am honored to have worked with Mary, bipartisan colleagues in the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds to create a children’s mental health system in Iowa. Once signed by the Governor, this effort will be a vital step forward in addressing depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions that have been impacting more young Iowans every year.

The Office of Adolescent Health says that last year, 29 percent of Iowa high-schoolers reported “feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two or more weeks in a row so that they stopped doing some usual activities.” This children’s mental health system should be a key line of defense in pushing that number down towards zero in the future.

Why does this legislation matter? There has never been a children’s mental health system in Iowa until now. This has been discussed for more than 20 years as parents of all income levels have struggled with where to go to get help. The bill on its way to the governor will set up a framework to identify services and assist in the coordination between families and providers. Discussions are continuing on the Mental Health Levy calibration and sources for long-term funding to ensure a viable structure.

Local carpenters' union helps inmates build trade skills and prevent labor trafficking — Iowa's rural communities need more housing, and our local trades unions, nonprofits, communities are teaming up with inmates in Newton build skills and build homes as part of the solution. It's an effort led by the non-profit organization Homes for Iowa, Inc. and Iowa Prison Industries. Inmates learn a trade skill before release with skilled professionals to build housing units at an affordable cost of approximately $110,000, that can go to help the housing crisis in rural Iowa towns. I am proud to have no-partisan legislative support to advance this initiative. During a recent site visit to the Newton Correctional facility with a group of legislators, all came away confident in the program and grateful for the creative problem-solving its leaders.

Why does this program matter? With nearly 30 percent of Iowans renting their homes, we want to expand opportunities for rural residents to buy affordable houses. It’s also important to recognize that growing rural jobs means making sure when businesses are looking to set up shop, they’re confident there is enough housing in the area to accommodate the workforce. I’ve been proud to collaborate on tax incentives to encourage first-time homebuyers in the past, but it’s also critical we address the fundamental “supply and demand” problem going on with Iowa’s rural housing shortage — and this project is a great start.

I also joined Carpenters from the Altoona-base training center and Local Union 106 to look at quality construction projects across Iowa. While many builders are doing exceptional work in our state, a few bad actors have engaged in workforce exploitation by hiring subcontractors who acquire unskilled and illegal laborers to work on sites. Recently in Omaha, an illegal worker died as a result of electrocution at a work site; not one contractor came forward to help the individual or the family — they simply wrote him off as an unclaimed body with no support. This is wrong. It exploits workers and it hurts good businesses and contractors who are doing it right.

I was proud to join the carpenters and their verified employee work sites. These highly-trained professionals are building homes and businesses the right way — following labor and safety standards while looking after fellow members.

Holding bad employers accountable when they exploit laborers not authorized to work in the USA is vital. Not only does verify qualified labor cut down on egregious labor trafficking practices in Iowa, but it also makes sure that the good men and women of Local 106 don’t get wrongfully passed up by illicit employers willing to hire for jobs with less regard for safety and ethics.