By Milan Agarwala, Staff Reporter
On Oct. 3, Chester County launched Innovate Chester County, an initiative to actively engage residents in addressing concerns regarding affordable housing, public transportation, children’s mental health, veteran services and agriculture. County governance aims to work with residents through volunteer-led workgroups to develop experience-driven and innovative solutions to the concerns.
Chester County Commissioner Josh Maxwell helps facilitate Innovate Chester County. He said that initiative leaders developed the program because they believed that public involvement is essential for effective problem-solving.
“We can get better ideas to solve problems by including the public in these decisions,” Maxwell said. “The public might give us more options to choose from and try to solve a problem.”
The commissioners picked the initiative’s areas of focus, feeling that the chosen five affect all residents. Each workgroup, consisting of up to 20 participants with diverse backgrounds and experiences, is collaborating to strategize within their designated focus area. Volunteers applied via a form on the county website and had to be at least 18 years old and a county resident.
“The idea is to have lots of different perspectives, so experts are important,” Maxwell said. “When you do things like this, you get two types of volunteers: people who really care about the issue and people who are really technocratic and good at solving problems regardless of the issue.”
The organizers expect workgroup participants to attend virtual or in-person meetings to discuss ideas. Professional moderators, team leads and note-takers will help direct the members, while an initiative steering committee will collaborate with government workers for the implementation of their ideas.
“It is kind of like a King Arthur approach — roundtable where no one’s at the end of the table — and we think that might free up some conversation,” Maxwell said. “We want this to be worth people’s time.”
To match participants with roles that suit their skills and passions, the workgroups will have a larger number of members in the beginning before reducing to a more fitting number.
“The workgroup is going to be big to start, where people are going to fall off, and we’ll split up the groups to work on specific problems that they’re interested in. It’s going to be kind of fluid,” Maxwell said.
As part of the initiative’s mental health focus, leaders are open to collaborating with schools and creating county youth mental health facilities.
“A potential result is that we’re going to do two things: create a behavioral health core and a behavioral health hospital for kids here in Chester County,” Maxwell said. “To the degree schools are interested in working with mental health with the county, we would certainly be interested.”
Junior Venu Dhanabal, president of mental health awareness and advocacy club Hope and Beyond, appreciates the initiative focusing attention to mental health issues among youth.
“I think it’s very important for mental health specialists to be involved in local governance because currently, the hardest part of helping students with their mental health is making them aware of all the resources they have,” Dhanabal said. “Getting specialists involved in community gathering efforts and workgroups can help with that.”
Milan Agarwala can be reached at [email protected].
