In response to mounting frustration over Santa Barbara’s chronically stunted mental-health infrastructure, the county supervisors have approved a spending plan to add 12 new involuntary-hold beds to the mix. Of those, eight will be in the Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) and reserved for individuals experiencing short-term mental health crises for which the maximum stay allowed will be 23 hours.
When the CSU was first built nine years ago near the county’s mental-health care campus off Calle Real, it was meant to provide a cooling-off spot for individuals at risk of exceeding their boiling point. The hope was that it would divert people who might otherwise need the services of the county’s chronically overwhelmed Psychiatric Health Facility (PHF) — with only 16 involuntary beds — reserved for those posing an immediate threat to themselves or others.
While the PHF beds are locked — at least for three days — the CSU beds were not; patients could not be kept against their will. This significantly reduced its utility to those dealing with people in acute crisis. That, coupled with staffing shortages long plaguing the county’s Department of Behavioral Wellness, explains why the facility has been either unused or seriously underutilized since its grand opening.
Under the new arrangement, the CSU will now be a locked facility. And it will no longer be run by Behavioral Wellness but by Crestwood, a private mental-health care contractor. The same spending plan approved by the supervisors will also cover the cost of adding four new beds to Crestwood’s 32-bed Lompoc facility for seriously mentally ill individuals now locked up in county jail.
“These are locked beds for people on conservatorships that provide intensive mental-health treatment,” explained Spencer Brandt, staff assistant to Supervisor Das Williams. “While four beds might sound small, when you consider the PHF is capped at 16, this is a significant expansion of capacity.”
The supervisors voted to authorize spending $23 million in state funds — funneled through what’s called the Community Corrections Partnership (CCP) — designed to keep people with serious mental-health issues out of the criminal justice system and get them into intensive treatment instead.
The newly constituted CSU beds are scheduled to open for service May 28.
