Care, Made Visible:
A Fierce Mamas Mayoral Candidate Questionnaire

Fierce Mamas invited candidates for Shelby County Mayor to respond to a questionnaire grounded in the lived experiences of caregivers navigating complex medical needs, mental health, substance use, and youth systems.

All candidates were given the same set of questions and the same opportunity to participate. Responses are published as submitted and have not been edited for content.

We will continue to add responses on a rolling basis as they are received. We are grateful to the candidates who have taken the time to engage with these questions.

Responses from Mickell Lowery

Submitted: 5/1/2026 10:22:40

Q1: What is your understanding of what went wrong at Memphis Recovery Centers, and what responsibility—if any—does Shelby County have in preventing situations like that?

Nine teenagers walked out of a treatment facility over the course of a week. Parents couldn't get answers on where their children were. That's a nightmare no parent should have to live through, and it points to a system that is failing families at the most vulnerable moment of their lives.

I'm the father of a daughter with autism. I've spent years navigating systems on behalf of my child, making phone calls, pushing for services, and trusting that the professionals on the other end are delivering what they say they will. I know how much is riding on that trust. When a facility betrays it, and a family can't get answers, something is deeply wrong.

Shelby County may not be the licensing authority for treatment facilities; that sits with the state, but we are not powerless. We fund behavioral health services, we contract with providers, and we set the tone for what's acceptable in our community. I believe the county has a responsibility to use every tool we have to ensure families aren't placing their children into programs that can't keep them safe.

Q2: What authority do you believe the county currently has over adolescent treatment facilities, and where do you think that authority falls short?

The state handles licensing for facilities through TDMHSAS. But the county controls its own budget, its Health Department, and its contracts with providers. That gives us real leverage over the providers we fund and the standards we set for partnerships. Where the authority falls short is in the space between a state license and what actually happens inside a facility day to day. A provider can be licensed and still fail families, as we see far too often. The county needs to be more assertive about using the tools we already have to demand better: our funding relationships, our ability to convene stakeholders, and the County Mayor's platform. We can't keep pointing to Nashville every time something goes wrong in our own backyard.

Q3: Within your first 6 months, what would you do—specifically—to ensure that no family is placing a child into a program that lacks appropriate psychiatric care, oversight, or safety standards?

In a season where people are making promises that can’t be met, I want to be honest about the scope of the County Mayor’s abilities: they can't single-handedly regulate treatment facilities. The authority for that belongs to and is owned by the state. However, I can make sure that the county is using every tool available to protect families.

In the first six months, I would sit down with the Health Department and our contracted behavioral health providers to understand where the gaps are between what families are being promised and what they're actually receiving. I want to hear directly from caregivers about their experiences, not through a report, but right there in the room.

From there, we can start identifying what the county can do within its authority to strengthen oversight of providers we fund, improve the information families have access to, and create a clearer path for families to raise concerns when something goes wrong. I don't want to make promises I can't keep. But I can promise that this will be a priority from day one, that families will be in the room, and that I'll treat this with the same urgency I'd want if it were my own child on the other side of that door – because it could be.

Q4: Would you support a publicly accessible system that evaluates and verifies treatment providers’ claims—something like a “truth in advertising” model for behavioral health? Why or why not?

Yes. When a family is in crisis, they're making life-or-death decisions under enormous pressure. They're trusting that a program can deliver what it says it can, and they often have no way to verify that. I've been in that position as a parent. When your child needs help, you don't have time to become an expert on accreditation standards. You just need someone to tell you the truth.

I would support working with the Health Department and our community partners to explore what a resource like that could look like for Shelby County, giving families real, verified information about what providers actually offer, how they're staffed, and whether there have been complaints. What gets measured gets managed, and right now families are navigating this in the dark.

Q5: What role should families play in oversight when something goes wrong in a treatment setting?

Families should be the first people consulted, not the last to find out. When something goes wrong, caregivers are often the only ones who can tell you what was promised versus what actually happened. Parents like the ones at Memphis Recovery Centers, who couldn't get straight answers about their children, should never be in that position. Their voices should be part of the accountability process, not shut out of it.

I would work to ensure that any oversight or review process connected to county-funded services includes a meaningful role for families, because this is personal for me. Navigating systems on behalf of my daughter has taught me that the people living inside these systems every day see things that no inspector ever will. We should be treating that insight as essential, not inconvenient.

Q6: Do you believe mental health and substance use treatment are core county infrastructure, like roads and courts—or secondary services? How does that belief show up in your budget priorities?

There is no question that this is a core infrastructure. When we treat behavioral health as secondary, we end up paying for it through our jails, our emergency rooms, and our child welfare system. We're spending the money either way. The only question is whether we spend it early enough to actually help people, or late enough that we're just managing the fallout.

That belief shows up in my commitment to getting qualified mental health counselors and conflict resolution into our schools starting at the elementary level. It shows up in my push for Universal Pre-K, because early stability for kids and families prevents crises down the road. And it shows up in my willingness to look at our county budget and say that behavioral health services deserve the same priority as any other essential function of government.

Q7: Where, today, do you think people in Shelby County are most likely to “fall out” of the system when seeking mental health or addiction care?

At the handoff. Someone reaches out for help, they get assessed, and then they're told to wait for a bed, or given a referral across town, or handed a phone number. For a family in crisis, that gap is where people vanish. I've heard it from parents, from coaches, from people in our neighborhoods. The system asks you to be your own advocate at the exact moment you have the least capacity to do it.

We also lose people at re-entry, when someone leaves treatment or incarceration and there's no one connecting them to ongoing care, housing, or a job. The system treats these as separate problems – but for families they're all the same fight. Breaking down those silos is exactly what I mean when I talk about being a Chief Relationship Officer.

Q8: What is one point in that system where the county could intervene quickly and measurably within your first year?

Making sure people don't disappear between asking for help and actually receiving it. That transition point, from crisis to care, is where we lose too many people. I want to work with the Health Department to explore how we can keep someone connected from the moment they reach out until they're in sustained services. Whether that's a dedicated follow-up function or better coordination between our existing providers, the goal is simple: no one should fall through the cracks just because the system isn't set up to walk with them.

Q9: How should Shelby County respond when a young person’s behavior is driven by untreated mental illness or substance use—what should happen instead of detention?

When a kid is acting out because they're sick and struggling, locking them up doesn't fix anything. It makes it worse. I've coached youth football for 13 years, and I've seen the difference between a young person who needs discipline and one who needs help. Our system doesn't always know the difference, and that's a problem.

I support expanding diversion programs that connect young people to treatment, mentorship, and career pathways instead of a courtroom. And I’ll fight to bring more qualified mental health professionals in our schools who can recognize when a student is in crisis and intervene before law enforcement ever gets called. That's what I mean when I say education is crime prevention. We have to start earlier and do better.

Q10: What would it take for you to feel confident that the Youth Justice and Education Center is not simply warehousing kids in crisis?

Independent oversight with real authority. As County Mayor, I’ll support meaningful efforts to strengthen independent oversight for the YJEC, which should include and prioritize the voices of community members, caregivers, and mental health professionals.

I also want to see outcome data, not just compliance reports. Are young people getting mental health care while they're detained? Are they being connected to services when they leave? If the answer is no, then we're warehousing kids and calling it something else.

No facility housing our children should operate without that level of accountability. We need leaders who will ask hard questions and expect real answers. On Day One as County Mayor, I’ll be ready to be one of them.

Q11: How will you ensure that families are meaningfully included in decisions when their child is involved in the juvenile system?

You can't help a kid without including the people who love them. Too often in our system, parents and caregivers get treated like part of the problem instead of part of the solution. They're shut out of decisions, kept in the dark about their child's treatment, and expected to pick up the pieces afterward with zero support.

I want families involved at every stage, from intake through re-entry planning. That means making sure caregivers know their rights, have real access to information about what's happening with their child, and have a genuine voice in the plan being built around them. As a dad, if one of my girls were in that system, I would expect nothing less. Every family deserves that same level of care.

Q12: Where do caregivers currently exist in your mental health and public safety strategy?

At the center, because I am one. As I’ve described, my wife and I are raising a daughter with autism, and we’ve spent years doing what every caregiver in Shelby County does: making phone calls, pushing for services, sitting in waiting rooms, learning complex systems, and fighting to make sure our daughter gets what she was promised. That’s my life, not a hypothetical.

So when I talk about mental health support in schools, or accountability for providers, or making sure families have a voice in how systems are run, I'm not speaking from a distance. I'm speaking as someone who has been on the other side of those systems and knows how it feels when they don't work. Caregivers belong at the center of this strategy because they're the ones holding it all together. My administration will reflect that.

Q13: What would it look like to treat caregivers as part of the care team—not as collateral or afterthought?

It looks like picking up the phone and actually calling a parent back. It looks like including caregivers in treatment-planning meetings instead of informing them after the fact. It looks like recognizing that the work happening at home – coordinating medications, managing appointments, keeping a family together during the worst moments of their lives – is real work that the entire system depends on.

If we actually valued that work, we would resource it. Respite care so caregivers can breathe. Navigation support so they're not doing this alone. Peer networks connecting them with other families who understand. The system leans on caregivers every single day. It's time we started supporting them with the same energy.

Q14: What supports would you put in place for caregivers navigating addiction or severe mental illness in their families?

The first thing I'd want to do is listen. Caregivers navigating addiction or severe mental illness in their families know exactly where the system is failing, and they're usually the last people anyone asks. I would work with the Health Department and our community partners to explore expanding peer support networks, respite options, and navigation assistance so families aren't white-knuckling it alone. When a loved one enters treatment, the caregiver should be part of the plan, not handed a pamphlet and sent home. Support has to be ongoing, because the work of caregiving doesn't stop when a program ends.

Q15: What data should the county be publicly reporting right now about mental health, addiction, and youth outcomes that it is not?

Treatment wait times. Bed availability. Overdose response data by ZIP code. Recidivism rates for young people who went through diversion versus detention. Outcomes for people who completed county-funded treatment programs. Breakdowns of those outcomes by race, gender, age, disability, sexuality, and any other demographic info that can help us close the already too-wide gaps. Provider compliance data, including staffing levels and complaints. Right now, too much of this is either siloed in different departments or simply unavailable to the public. Again, what gets measured gets managed. Families deserve an honest picture of how our systems are performing, and we owe them that transparency.

Q16: How will you ensure that data is used to improve systems—not just to justify them?

By making sure the people living inside these systems have access to the same numbers as the people running them. When data only flows upward to administrators, it can be used to write reports that just make programs look good on paper. When caregivers and community members can see it too, it creates real pressure to improve. I want public reporting that tracks meaningful outcomes, and I want the people most affected by these systems to have a role in deciding what we're measuring in the first place. That's how you keep data honest.

Q17: What is one investment you would make—even if it is politically difficult—because you believe it would reduce long-term harm?

Universal Pre-K. I know it's a significant budget commitment, and I know some people will say we can't afford it. But I've been a working father. I know what it's like to worry about childcare costs while trying to build my career. And I've seen as a coach what happens when kids don't get a strong start. The research is clear: early investment in children reduces the need for intervention later, in every system we've covered in this questionnaire. Every dollar we spend here saves us multiples in incarceration, emergency care, and crisis response. It's the right thing to do, and it's the smart thing to do, and I'm willing to fight for it even when it's hard.

Q18: What would success look like, in measurable terms, four years from now, for families dealing with mental health or addiction in Shelby County?

Four years from now, I want a caregiver in Shelby County to be able to find honest information about providers, get connected to help without falling through a gap, and know that their voice actually matters in decisions about their loved one's care. I want to see shorter wait times for treatment, fewer young people entering the justice system for behavior driven by untreated illness, and better outcomes for people in county-funded programs. And I want all of that to be publicly reported so the community can hold us to it. The bottom line is that families should be able to say the system worked for them, because we built it to.

Q19: If elected, will you commit to meeting with caregivers—not as a one-time listening session, but as an ongoing advisory voice in your administration?

Yes. Because that’s how I actually operate. I've spent eight years on the Commission being accessible to the people I serve, and that's not going to change when I'm Mayor. And Fierce Mamas is doing the kind of work that should be informing policy at every step. You're on the front lines of these systems every day, and your insight is something no consultant or committee can replicate.

I’d welcome an ongoing relationship with your organization. My door will be open, and I'll back that up with my time. I'm a caregiver, a father, and someone who has fought these systems alongside my own family. You deserve a Mayor who gets it. I do, and I'm ready to do this work together. Thank you for your time and all the work you do to support families and young people across Memphis.

Use and Attribution

This content is published by Fierce Mamas as part of an original candidate engagement initiative. Excerpts may be quoted with clear attribution to Fierce Mamas and, where possible, a link to the original source. Full reproduction, aggregation, or use out of context is not permitted without prior written permission.

We ask that any use of this material reflect the intent of the work: to make caregiver perspectives visible and to support informed, accountable public dialogue.