Layoffs are the wrong solution for Lake County Mental Health. That is likely to ignite an even more serious “downward fiscal spiral.” Lake County Mental Health should utilize the staff they already employ to combat major money-sucking expenditures.

Tuesday's fiscal report to the Board of Supervisors lists an obscene, ongoing millions of dollars spent by Lake County on an aggregate of residential treatment in other counties, hospitalizations in other counties, incarcerations (of Lake County's mentally ill) and on board and care facilities in various locations, including one local one.

Kristy Kelly, director of Mental Health Services, explained that persons exiting board and care where clients “lives are laid out for them” are simply not equipped to occupy any other housing available in Lake County. She notes the Lighthouse project as an example: It assumes an independent level of functional ability. When clients return to our community from any number of locked, residential, or board and care facilities, they face the immediate bleak fact that there exists no proper level of care for them here. It's either “all laid out for them” or it does nor exist – not at all – for our most seriously mentally ill.

This is the fast road to institutional recidivism. It also costs Lake County an incredible amount of money.

Supervisor Anthony Farmington conjectured out loud to Kelly today that “residential treatment within Lake County has probably already been discounted as a solution based on some analysis or other?” “No” is the answer to that. “Residential care has not been cost evaluated because,” according to Kelly, “we do not have enough staff.”

Hmm.

On Tuesday I shared with the board my personal story and passionate plea for sound crisis intervention including the staffing (rather than layoff) to create a local crisis center. Imagine a mission to prevent hospitalizations and wrongful incarcerations. The Lighthouse could be such a place (not included on the list of deficit spending that the board received Tuesday). Envision a clinically supervised stabilization center skilled in suicide prevention, contracting for safety, family crisis counseling, and a day program to provide that vital missing link: the intermediate development of essential skills, that practical community bridge, locally situated, staffed with eight county employees whose names and lives are slated to a chopping block instead.

I shared this: My daughter was incarcerated for two months (charges dismissed due to mental illness), two hospitalizations in another county, and just returned home this week from two months in board and care. All this ensued since last October when our pleas for crisis prevention were denied expressly for reasons of “understaffing.” Today the only thing that stands between my daughter and a return to costly institutional care rests with In-Home Supportive Services, a funding put at imminent risk today as Lake County Mental Health raids Social Service funds to pay the jail or the hospital. This means, if IHSS funding is cut, she is at immediate risk. Again. Tuesday I learned how much Lake County went into debt over my situation since last October; I wonder how much they saved by not providing crisis intervention six months ago.

If you or your family are affected by these issues, please contact me at 707-355-9209 and share. We are returning to the process of reestablishing a local National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in Lake County. This was initiated last summer, but I dropped my ball last October and I'm sorry for that. State Mental Health Funding (MHSA) from Sacramento requires that local agencies carefully consult consumers and their families in planning expenditures to address the right needs. Let's talk.

Sarah Shems is a social worker who lives in Hidden Valley Lake.