Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Mark Ridley-Thomas co-authored a motion to have Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement (HOME) teams provide critical treatment interventions for people experiencing homelessness and struggling with mental illness. [View the motion here.]
HOME teams include mental health psychiatrists, mental health counselors, psychiatric nurses, psychiatric social workers, substance abuse counselors, medical caseworkers and peers, who make mental health evaluations on the street and offer voluntary crisis intervention services along with access to resources like housing.
If necessary, the team can also place individuals who are in imminent danger or considered gravely disabled on a 72-hour hold for involuntary evaluation and treatment.
Under the pilot program, the teams will be able to seek a court-ordered conservatorship for someone who is not in imminent danger but is gravely disabled and refusing voluntary mental health services.
“This is another important tool in our ongoing effort to serve those suffering with mental health issues who fall into chronic homelessness,” Barger said. “We remain dedicated to address the needs of these vulnerable individuals and must work together to find new solutions that improve and enhance the treatment options we provide for people experiencing homelessness.”
Barger has fought to change California’s legal definition of gravely disabled in order to prevent people unable to care for themselves from dying on the street. That has proven difficult, and opponents of changes say individuals have the civil right to refuse medication or other treatment.
“Gravely disabled” means that someone cannot provide for their own basic needs, including food, clothing and shelter, due to a mental disorder. The standard can be difficult to meet in practice and different municipalities treat the standard differently.
The Department of Mental Health developed the pilot program to help people suffering with severe mental illness who cycle repeatedly through county jails and hospitals and in and out of homelessness. Dr. Jonathan Sherin, who heads the department, underscored the need for more dramatic interventions.
“Our department’s countywide, multidisciplinary HOME teams interact on a daily basis with individuals whose lives have been shattered by serious mental illness,” Sherin said. “These clients are unable to make good decisions about their care. It is unjust and inhumane to allow our clients to be exposed to the streets or jails when help is available. This pilot program would provide our HOME teams additional engagement tools, including ‘outpatient conservatorship’ to ensure a client receives treatment, without having to rely on hospitalization.”
Under a conservatorship, a court can appoint someone to care for an individual who cannot care for themselves and the court can mandate treatment. If DMH recommends a conservatorship, the department will also provide appropriate housing or a mental health bed and a dedicated treatment team for the person.
Nearly 1,000 homeless people died on the streets last year, a count that is likely to increase this year with the spread of COVID-19. Looking back at deaths in 2017, the Department of Mental Health found that a significant number of deaths were due to preventable or treatable medical conditions.
Ridley-Thomas said the need for the pilot program was urgent.
“Even before the pandemic, three of our homeless neighbors were dying on the streets every day. It is all the more urgent that we intervene humanely to prevent people from passively decaying on the streets as a result of severe and untreated mental illness,” Ridley-Thomas said.
“[The] motion will allow the county’s Department of Mental Health to immediately deploy their Homeless Outreach Mobile Engagement teams to pilot street-based treatment and clinical oversight to help our most vulnerable residents get on the path to recovery.”
–
Ragen Rogers says
F___ YOU L.A. COUNTY!
what a cowardly way [removed] twisted way to “clean the trash off the streets” I have been homeless and do you really give a ahit, or do you really even care ti know what struggles the homeless face every day? DISCRIMINATION! DISCRIMINATION! DISCRIMINATION! And guess what “BLACKS” you are not the only ones! Im white, was born white, I look very white, not to mention I am considered to be a very attractive female. My clothes are always clean, ironed, I do not push stupid wheel jamming loud shopping carts anywhere, but can anyone guess what I experienced when I went into the Sheriff Station here in Lancaster to make a report for valuable items stolen from me, stolen from my vehicle? Not sure of the correct spelling, but “Metten” was the supervisor in charge at that time- He told me ” you are homeless. You want to make a report on theft. But everything that you own either you found it somewhere, or someone gave it to you. Basically its trash”!
Do I was unable to make a report. It should have been easy since there were only about 6 items which I have pictures of, pictures of their serial numbers, or for the jewelry that does not have serial numbers both had modifications. One hade chipped emerald, the other one I had to replace the clasp after accidentally closing it in the car door. I had pictures, and info needed to easily ID these items when/if found. But because I was homeless I had no rights. They would not even make the report. The hurtful discrimination I experienced that day still fails to cease in existence. Another incident here in L.A County there was a free womens heart screening in Lancaster for African American Women because they have a higher risk of heart disease. I was just beginning to experience symptoms of what I found out later to be heart disease. I did not qualify for the free screening because I am not African American! Just imagine today what would happen if there were a free screening for caucasian women ONLY! It would not be acceptable. Then there is the time when you go to work and come back to find EVERYTHING YOU OWNED- MAY I REMIND YOU -may not seem to be a whole lot, but it is something. A cheap harbor freight fan is a genius invention when your homeless and its 110° outside. A sparklets bottle with a lid is a necessity when you have to buy your water from machines in supermarket parkinglots. Six or Seven outfits are appreciated when you have no other clothes. Flashlights because you are without electricity (which is actually an over rated luxury), a mattress to lay on instead of the hard giant red ant infested areas of this desert, a two week supply of top ramen, etc… the list goes on and on- but when you cone hone to find EVERYTHING gone and you see a tractor has been there, and did a very good job at leveling the place i will admit, but when you experience loss like this it does not let me forget that I do not have rights! I do not matter! I am considered trash! I am not respected enough to even receive some kind of pre-warning of any kind. Not a letter left , or a business card, nothing- gives me no chance at all to get out the way of what ever project or idea they have for the location I have placed myself.
Now this! Now L.A County has come up with the plan to detain homeless for mental evaluation. You need the F_____ mental evaluation! You see us as trash! But you probably could never make it living honeless! It takes a strong survivor to survive like this!
If you suddenly didnt have that stupid knob to turn to get instant hot water- if you had to take showers in cold water that you had to monitor the usage of. If you didnt have that vaccuum cleaner to suck carpet clean in minutes instead of having to sweep dirt out of carpet can take a couple hours. If you dodnt have that microwave to cook, rotate, defrost, time everything just right instead of having to put the tank on the bbq, and fight off every damn nat, mosquito, moth, fly, honey bee, etx If only you could for even a moment have the slightest compassion and try to considee what we go through- I hope you see it from my angle one day. When the tables turn and we are talking about you- then we will see if you really understand what you are doing, or if you are acting as a puppet doing what your told and foolishly believing you’re doing the right thing!
But actually, just as usual, you are doing more harm than good! You are putting a wall between us. You are making an enemy of us!
It doesnt have to continue this way!
Ragen
Footsteps says
Our entire nation is struggling with mental health! Drinking, illegal drugs, legal drugs, etc.. Racist views on any one group of people is a mental health problem. You can’t round people up that don’t want help, or those people that don’t think they have a problem. Keep pouring money into programs that don’t fix anything, then you realize these politicians and so called fixers have a political agenda and have no clue what they’re doing; they just want to look good.
Mark says
Good on her [Barger], but I’m afraid it’s a real mark of her [and other Supes’] lack of vision that she won’t tread Constitutionally murky water to save housed citizens from themselves in cases of severe mental illness. In the UK you can “section” (have the National Health Service detain someone for mental health treatment under the Mental Health Act) without the excuse that people have a Constitutional right to drink themselves to death. Her San Marino background literally makes her blind to the idea that a self-governing community could re-write the community’s rules to save people from themselves–and not just themselves in almost all cases. Alcoholics with keys anywhere are a threat to drivers everywhere. Drug addicts, along with other severely mentally ill individuals almost invariably impose a decades-long trauma tax on society via their children. Involuntarily aiding just those least able to defend their so-called “rights” represents the weak tea we’ve been accustomed to from Barger for far too long. Weak tea we willingly drink because we cannot even fathom that our mythical founders were infallible. I don’t give a shit if you’re Warren Buffet or Rancho Vista’s “TOO UGLY TO PROSTITUTE” guy: You don’t have the right to impose medically-induced irrationality and its costs on a free society. If we’re serious about this “laboratory of democracy” idea the onus is on state and local gov’t to pick up the slack for other levels of gov’t.