Will NE Iowa counties join together for mental health regional system?

April 1st is the deadline for counties in Iowa to voluntarily join a regional organization that provides mental health services.  But with less than three months to go until that deadline, plenty of questions still abound.

Winneshiek County MH/DD CPC Administrator Jan Heikes says "Overall, the citizens of Winneshiek County will benefit from this reorganization."  But the details of which counties will join together in NE Iowa are anything but resolved yet.

In the past three years the Northeast Iowa Counties Systems, consisting of eight counties, worked together to plan for mental health and developmental disabilities services.  But Delaware, Fayette and Howard counties have decided not to continue this cooperation after April 1st--and now some of the remaining five counties are also wavering. 

If Winneshiek County can't find a region to join by July 1st, it will be assigned to one by the State of Iowa.  Heikes hopes it doesn't come to that.  She'd like to see a resolution soon because, as she notes, "How do you plan for something when you don't know what's going on?"