Comments by salamanda
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Posted on July 18 at 7:08 a.m.
Imagine taking a wrecking ball to a historic part of a city, and then demolishing it and replacing it with a big gray-slab buildiing. This is what the plan for mental health is in Santa Barbara.
Posted on April 23 at 11:10 p.m.
It's great that the County Supervisors are willing to look for revenue in creative ways to fund services and housing for the mentally ill. There is potentially revenue at the state level - Mental Health Service Act money. There is Tobacco Settlement money. There is prioritizing funds for different departments. The County mental health execs need help in developing some optimism about preserving the system of care. If we were to adopt the plan of massive cuts to services and housing for the mentally ill that County mental health just came up with, it would be like Hurricane Katrina hitting the most vulnerable in Santa Barbara County. We are fortunately turning a corner here, and with strong advocacy from the community, and caring elected officials, we are collectively directing the hurricane back out to sea.
Posted on March 28 at 9:54 p.m.
The City can help - if the mentally ill get turned out of facilities and support programs by the County's planned cuts - by installing more benches for the homeless on State St.
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Posted on July 24 at 10:25 p.m.
As much as Ann Eldridge and Jan Winter would like the plan of cuts by County Mental Health to work, the reality is more than 200 clients will experience a loss of their current mental health supports, and a reduction in the level of service they will receive if they are in the residential treatment programs whose mental health funding will be cut.
Eldridge and Winter are both members of the County Mental Health Commission that for many years has been, most of the time, a rubber-stamp for whatever County Mental Health has wanted to do.
Put yourself in the position of the clients.
A plan could have been devised to restructure the system without so much grief and loss having to be experienced by those in our community struggling to recover from mental illness.
It's time we had some new members of the Mental Health Commission who could provide strong oversight of ADMHS, and had the guts to oppose any plan that entails the kind of widespread disruption in the lives of the clients and their families that this current plan involves.
On Mental Health Budget