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EDITORIAL: Mental Health: Advocates must work together to ensure Duval doesn't lose needed funds

Florida Times-Union - 12/10/2016

Dec. 10--Second of three parts.

For several years, substance-abuse and mental health advocates have been looking at ways to improve services in this area.

In 2015, the Mental Health Resource Center received a five-year $15 million grant from the state for improvements. But now that plan is drowning in uncertainty.

What happened?

The mental health community of Duval County began 2016 with a celebratory bang.

Just days before the new year dawned, the Mental Health Resource Center received word it would be awarded a $15 million grant to create a facility that would focus on diverting both substance abusers and those suffering from mental illness from the county jail, providing them instead with appropriate treatment.

It was something everyone agreed was needed here.

Yet within a few short months, the focus of the grant changed. In April the state amended its proposal request, and the Mental Health Resource Center, in turn, amended what it planned to do with the money.

Not that the change is bad. It is just different. What began as an attempt to bring a brick-and-mortar receiving facility to town became something much different.

a drop-in center for mental illness

Now, instead of a facility to automatically receive those with behavioral health problems from law enforcement officers who pick them up on the street, the grant will pay instead to help the Mental Health Resource Center develop a pair of different operations.

The first will be a revamped 24-bed crisis stabilization unit in the center's Beach Boulevard facility. This will add more beds to the 84 beds already operated by the center for Baker-Acted adults and children.

The second use of the grant money will be for a sort of mental health and substance-abuse clinic at the center's West 20th Street facility that operates 24 hours a day and is called the Comprehensive Services Center.

While the previous idea for a Central Receiving Facility involved the diversion of people directly before they even reached the county jail, this new idea only remotely involves reducing the number of jailed people with mental illness or substance addictions.

Yes, there will be more beds in the city to receive mentally ill patients in crisis. But the center's Comprehensive Services Center will focus on providing emergency services for people whose conditions are not critical enough to require crisis stabilization, hospitalization or jailing.

The Comprehensive Services Center will provide immediate care for these people and then offer follow-up services that are both accessible and affordable. It will also be a one-stop shop, so to speak, where people can receive other services, including financial help.

While it won't immediately relieve law enforcement officers of the need to find placements for mentally ill people they've picked up, it is hoped it will eventually lessen the burden on the jail, hospitals and crisis stabilization units by preventing people from ever reaching that critical stage.

many services are needed

Denise Marzullo, president and CEO of Mental Health of America for Northeast Florida, sees the Mental Health Resource Center's new plan as something that's vitally needed in the community.

She describes callers to her organization begging for help with a mental illness. Due to the shortage of providers, it now takes three months or more for a person to receive even the first appointment to get help.

"Those (appointments) are really difficult to come by," she says. "It is a need and a really significant one."

Many in the mental health community, however, are just confused by the change. Several of the people who originally supported the grant for a Central Receiving Facility hadn't even heard about the change.

Despite the confusion in the larger community, Bob Sommers, president and CEO of Mental Health Resource Center, says his organization has already begun the construction needed to make the two facilities usable. These changes cannot be paid for out of grant money, so must be paid for out of the center's budget.

Now comes the real test for the community. But in that community is divisiveness

People who worked hard to create change, feel left out and abandoned. At a minimum, they are confused by the changes.

Yet they almost unanimously agree that although the new proposal reflects a significant change, it will provide services to plug yet another hole in the system.

"We as a community really need this," says Christine Cauffield, executive director of LSF Health Systems. "This is a critical need that will save the community lots of money in reducing hospitalization."

The question now is whether advocates, despite the change in direction, can pull together to come up with the matching funds needed to ensure Duval County doesn't lose this $15 million.

Time is growing short. And the clock is ticking.

Tomorrow: Funding mental health, as usual, is the main hurdle.

___

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