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On November 2, 2004 the voters of California passed Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA). The MHSA has the potential to significantly change the delivery of mental health services in this State. There is significant additional funding set aside to achieve the following goals: § To define mental illness as a condition deserving priority attention, including prevention and early intervention services and medical and supportive care. § To reduce the long-term adverse impact resulting from untreated serious mental illness. § To expand successful, innovative service programs including culturally and linguistically competent approaches for underserved populations. § To provide funds to adequately meet the need of all who can be identified and enrolled. § To ensure that funds are expended in most cost effective manner and services are provided in accordance with recommended best practices with oversight to ensure accountability. It is our objective and obligation to achieve these goals in each and every county in California. To successfully complete an undertaking of this magnitude will require thoughtful, deliberative and extensive planning. It is essential that our implementation strategies and programs are well thought out and contribute to the transformation of our public mental health system to a more accessible, responsible, accountable program driven by outcomes and what works. Therefore, we are requesting your partnership in developing and designing strategies to implement MHSA. DMH is committed to having multiple methods for obtaining stakeholder input. To facilitate this input, we will develop and disseminate draft documents as a starting point to initial discussion on the issues and policy. Through meetings, written comments, Internet and oral communications, we want the broadest stakeholder participation feasible to inform our final decisions. In addition to statewide planning the MHSA requires local planning and provides funding for that planning. DMH is in the process of preparing documents, laying out the requirements for local programs to request funding, the proposed distribution of that funding and a statement of intent. A draft of these documents will be distributed in November and will be posted on our website, www.dmh.ca.gov. After dissemination of these documents, a stakeholder meeting will be convened on Friday, December 17, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Department of Social Services’ Auditorium, 744 P Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 to obtain feedback and input to shape the final local planning requirement efforts. It is important that at this time, local planning reflect the agreed upon principles and requirements and, hence, should not supercede this process. As stated earlier, DMH will also accept comments in writing at the following address: Carol Hood, Deputy Director Mental Health Services Act California Department of Mental Health 1600 9th Street, Room 130 Sacramento, California 95814 FAX 916-653-9194
We have also established a centralized e-mail address, mhsa "at" dmh.ca.gov, where you can send comments or raise questions regarding the initiative. E-mails received at this address will be forwarded to the appropriate person within DMH for consideration and for the development of a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document which will be posted on our website. DMH will continue to develop a variety of draft documents for input. We expect to have additional drafts ready for stakeholder input in early January. We will post regular updates on our web site, www.dmh.ca.gov. We will develop training and other strategies to support stakeholders in the planning and implementation of the MHSA. We will provide information about some of these opportunities in the very near future and a more comprehensive summary in the coming weeks. The implementation of the MHSA continues to evolve. We’re trying to establish timeframes that are consistent with the expectation to transform the mental health system through the MHSA in partnership with stakeholders. We expect to stagger the implementation of various elements of the MHSA while moving toward the vision of a fully integrated local Program and Expenditure Plan. We request your assistance throughout the process. Sincerely, Original signed by John Rodriguez for STEPHEN W. MAYBERG, Ph.D. Director _______________________________ NAMI California Letter Greetings: The attachments include: Mental Health Services Act Stakeholder Letter; Purpose of Attached Documents; Required Contents County Requests for Funding for the MHSA Planning; County Readiness Self-Assessment for Implementation of the MHSA System of Care Services Component;
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Text. _______________________________ Background 63's approval means mental health windfall by Rebecca Vesely Oakland Tribune Staff Writer November 4, 2004 Stunned and delighted that California voters decided to tax millionaires to fund mental health services Tuesday, advocates and policy-makers are gearing up to compete for the windfall. "It's exciting because it allows us to take a fresh look at our system in the county -- that's something that hasn't been done before," said Steve Bischoff, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Alameda County. Proposition 63 will raise about $275 million this fiscal year and $800 million annually thereafter for a wide range of mental health services. About 53 percent of voters approved the measure, while nearly 47 percent opposed it. This fiscal year, 45 percent of revenues must be spent on education and training for mental health workers, and another 45 percent is earmarked for capital improvements and technology projects. Five percent will be spent on local planning, while the remaining 5 percent will go to state implementation expenses. "New money is great, but it comes with responsibilities," said Harvey Tureck, mental health administrator for the city of Berkeley. "I think it's a smart way to stage it." From 2005 to 2008, 10 percent of funding will be spent on education and staff training, 20 percent on prevention and early intervention, 5 percent on innovative programs to increase access, up to 5 percent on state costs and up to 5 percent on county planning. The remaining funds can be spent on a wide range of programs as long as they serve adults and children with severe mental illness. This flexibility will help the 1.3 million Californians suffering from mental illnesses, said Rusty Selix, executive director of the California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies, who led the initiative campaign with Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "No child or adult with a severe mental illness will be left behind," Selix said. Among the programs that could get funding across the state are services for mentally ill children who lack adequate insurance, case management for people who are well enough to live on their own but need monitoring and outreach to substance abusers with mental health problems. The governor will appoint a 16-member Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission to approve the counties' spending plans. Committee members will include a mental health professional, state and local officials, two mentally ill people and a county sheriff. The tax -- an increase from 9.3 percent to 10.3 percent on every dollar of earned annual income over $1 million -- will start in January. Berkeley -- among the few cities with its own mental health department -- plans to hold a public hearing on its spending plan in early December. "This is really the first major expansion of mental health services in many, many years," Tureck said. "It indicates a tremendous recognition that mental health services are underfunded." ------------------------------
Treatment for mentally ill returns to South Shore Gregory Crofton, gcrofton@tahoedailytribune.com November 5, 2004 Nancy Harrison hustled into the Douglas County Administration Building Tuesday morning with the files of her clients on a small luggage cart. "This is how the mental health department works," said Harrison, who lives in Genoa but spends a lot of time shuttling between the county's main office in Minden and its new satellite office at Stateline. "It's a moveable feast." In the last year, Harrison has single-handedly re-established a Douglas County mental health program at the lake, a program shut down in 1992 because of budget constraints. Today Harrison's program has 75 clients and wants more. "We're still hustling for referrals and wanting people to know we are here," said Harrison, a licensed clinical social worker for 21 years. Most of her clients come as referrals from places such as Stateline Medical Center, Kingsbury Middle School and Sierra Recovery Center. "I was just prescribed medication for depression yesterday," said Tom, 48, of South Lake Tahoe, who requested his real name not be used. "Just the sessions with Nancy have been extremely helpful in getting over the feeling of hopelessness. She's a very down to earth, very smart and very compassionate person." Tom has struggled with drug addiction and alcoholism for 36 years. He has been part of the Sierra Recovery Center's inpatient treatment program for the last six weeks and has five months of sobriety under his belt. The recovery center referred him to Douglas County's program. "The group consensus was that I was trying to deal with my depression my own way by self-medicating," Tom said. "Now I have a very good counselor and a very good therapist and the combination of those two things give me hope that I can rebuild my life. I lost everything I had worked for when I was in jail. All my possessions were vandalized or stolen." Staff at the Stateline Medical Center referred Veronica, 53, of Stateline, to Harrison's program. Veronica, who also requested that her real name not be used, was a professional ballet dancer in San Francisco for 17 years before mental health issues caused her to turn to alcohol to "kill the pain." She ended up homeless then was sent to jail for panhandling. Harrison's program has helped Veronica stay sober and become eligible to receive disability payments for her bipolar disorder. Today she lives in her own place on Lower Kingsbury Grade, is prescribed four medications and is starting to feel better. "That place saved my life," Veronica said. "I find the staff very nurturing and comforting. It gave me hope that I could feel better." Mental health issues and drugs and alcohol addiction often become intertwined. "A large majority coming in for treatment are self-medicating with alcohol and drugs and masking mental health issues," said Betsy Fedor, executive director at the Sierra Recovery Center. "We are looking forward to expanding our relationship with Douglas County." Sierra Recovery Center is licensed to treat residents from California and Nevada. Mental health services are available in California through El Dorado County, but its resources are stretched thin and can only provide treatment for more severe cases. "The way things are set up with California has been often cumbersome," Fedor said. "(Douglas' lake program) now gives us a brand new avenue, a more immediate avenue that gets us in much faster." In addition to recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, Harrison, and a psychiatrist who visits once a month to prescribe medication for clients also treats students, couples and families. Douglas County is on track to receive funding from the Legislature that will allow its mental health program at the lake to move into a larger office, Harrison said. Right now the program is funded through the state's Rural Clinics Community Mental Health Centers. Clients are treated in an office within the county's administration building at Stateline. "Probably around the first of the year we'll start looking for a building and hire more support staff and more therapists," Harrison said. The cost to receive treatment is based on the income and number of dependents of whomever is seeking treatment. Private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid are also accepted. "We slide the fee scale for people. Nobody gets turned away," Harrison said. "We're able to help everybody - unemployed, homeless, people really down on their luck." The El Dorado County Mental Health Department doesn't have the luxury of accepting just anybody. Since the 1960s counties throughout the state of California have been strapped for funding when it comes to mental health treatment. "The demand has been much greater than the resources provided," said Ken Meibert, interim director for El Dorado County Department of Mental Health. "We do the best we can and focus on the most severely mentally ill." Severely ill typically means someone who is suicidal or can't work or function at home, not someone who has "situational" problems. "We try to make referrals to other agencies that might provide support to them," Meibert said. "It's always difficult to tell somebody with mental illness that they don't meet our target population. But that situation is not unique to El Dorado County. It happens throughout the state." But good news is on the horizon. On Tuesday, Californians' approved a statewide increase in mental health funding through Proposition 63, which passed with 53.4 percent of the vote. The proposition levies a 1 percent tax on residents with a taxable personal income of more than $1 million. It will provide $275 million in 2005 and then $800 million annually to fund mental health services for children, adults and seniors in the state. "We're all just very happy," Meibert said. "I'm trying to quantify what this will mean for the county right now. We're going to have to have meetings and focus groups to determine where the money is best to be utilized but it will absolutely have impact on access and treatment to folks that heretofore have been turned away." Source: Oakland Tribune Source: Tahoe Daily Tribune
Last Updated on 12/09/04 webmaster@namiscc.org |
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