County intends to break with Lifeways
By Terry Murry on Wednesday, May 26th, 2021 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – The Umatilla County Board of Commissioners has announced its intent to sever its relationship with Lifeways and have both mental health and substance abuse disorders dealt with by Community Counseling Solutions. Both of those organizations had submitted proposals to be the county’s sole provider.
It was the recommendation of a five-member task force that the county should accept the proposal of CCS. The board took the action at its administrative meeting today (Wednesday).
“We notified the two applicants of our intentions to award the bid to CCS,” Commissioner John Shafer said. “Now there is a seven-day waiting period before we can officially award the contract.”
That seven-day period is required to give Lifeways time to appeal the decision.
Shafer is the board’s liaison with mental health and substance use disorder services. He said CCS submitted a strong proposal, but his decision was also influenced by working with Lifeways when he was a sheriff’s office employee.
“Definitely a big part of my decision was my intimate knowledge with how things were being run,” he said.
The county currently operates the substance use disorders portion of mental health, and the plan is to turn that over to CCS on Aug. 1. Shafer said later this year CCS will take over the mental health services piece. All county employees will become employees of CCS, and Shafer said it is likely many Lifeways employees will also be hired.
“They don’t have to bring in anybody, but they do,” he said of CCS. “They don’t take away their wages or anything like that. They’re very above-board and they treat their employees well.”
Photo of CCS facility in Boardman.
