County, feds partner on human services programs News-Chronicle Brown County has received approval from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration to work on implementing new practices in the county's Human Services department. County officials including County Executive Carol Kelso and human services director Allen Parks went to Washington to negotiate the agreement earlier this year to secure financial and technical support. Parks said the first project will be a focus on combined mental health and substance abuse disorders among adolescents. Individuals with both mental illness and substance abuse disorder are said to have co-occurring disorders. This fall, evaluation experts from the Children's Mental Health Research Training center at the Florida Mental Health Institute will begin a multiyear, multiproject study of county services to children and adolescents. The work will be handled by SAMHSA's Co-Occurring Center for Excellence, launched in 2003 as a national resource in the field of co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Kelso said she hoped that Brown County would serve as a "model program" for other counties to emulate.