One local homeless man is known for charging out into traffic, lost in a fantasy world. A different homeless young man ended up in the emergency room last year with congestive heart failure and is now unable to work as a laborer. His disability and medical costs are being borne by taxpayers.
Other homeless men and women are well known for alcoholic or methamphetamine binges that can cost them precious pets, housing, new jobs and jail time. Crimes are committed over and over by people who are in obvious need of mental health treatment. Local social workers and police officers often want to help with obvious maladies, but their job descriptions don”t allow it.
A new Homeless Intervention Program would create advocates whose job description would include connecting the homeless to people and agencies that can help.
Jennifer Owen, grant writer for the City of Fort Bragg, and Anna Shaw, executive director of the nonprofit that runs the Hospitality Center, explained the proposal to the Mendocino County Mental Health Board last week.
Applications for services like the Food Bank and Hospitality Center would be created in a way to identify untreated ailments and historical problems. Based on those answers, the homeless person would be contacted, services described and connections facilitated.
The vision is for a system of check marks that programs can make about an applicant. When a person gets four check marks, a lead advocate at the Hospitality Center would be contacted and efforts made to get that person into the hands of those who can help.
“The steering group for this grant is the Interagency Coastal Homelessness Action Group. The screening tool is a composite of other evidence-based screening tools and so its validity is already researched and tested,” Shaw said.
The helps and referrals would take place at the Mendocino Coast Clinics, and the nonprofits like the Food Bank that regularly deal with mentally and physically ill people who are not getting treatment.
For example, health care reform (commonly called Obamacare) now allows many more people to get health insurance. But the people who need these services don”t sign up for them and they end up in the emergency room. Mendocino Coast Clinics is the leader in providing help for people to sign up with such services. The Clinics” patient advocate would play an important role in the grant program.
Mental Health Board members said the program would fill a critical local need. Chairman Guy Grenny drafted a letter of support, which got thumbs up from the board.
Tom Pinizzotto, newly promoted as head of mental health services, also promised a letter of support, Owen said.
The Group is seeking more letters from the community to the city that describe the severity of the local problem and the need for the grant to create the Homeless Intervention Program.
The grant application came from more than a year of brainstorming meetings by the Group, which involved advocates, businesses, local nonprofits, medical providers, police and government agencies. Owen said the City hopes the program will help deal with “frequent flyers,” the small number of people who get arrested often. “These are people who are interacting with a lot of agencies and using a lot of resources,” she said.
The City”s role would be to administer the $462,000 grant over a 30-month period.
The grant application is due April 6. If the application is successful, work would get started this year.
“I think it sounds wonderful, the City continues to find creative solutions to the needs of homeless individuals,” said Susan Era, a long-time county social worker now in private practice. “What we have in this program, advocacy, outreach, case management, these we know do work and linking people to these needed services like this is crucial. I am hoping there are measurements of success.”
Of course, the referrals are only as good as the programs referred to. Hospitality House recently negotiated a deal with the county to provide beds to county mental health, to people who otherwise would be shipped out of the county. But at about the same time, the county closed Red House as a drop in center, leaving no place for the homeless during the day.
The only disappointment among those at the Mental Health Board meeting was that the program must stop at the city limits. Owen said as a practical matter, the homeless from a much wider area will use the program at locations within the city.
“The homeless, by definition, have no fixed address,” she said.
She said the county, which did not apply for the Community Development Block Grant this year, could do so next year and the two agencies might work together. While the grant program isn”t Laura”s Law, it would likewise seek to present help to the most transient and troublesome people- who often avoid or refuse help.
While everything would be voluntary and one would not have to participate to access services like Hospitality House or the Food Bank, Shaw said advocates would do all they could to entice clients to participate in services.
She said the program has three goals: to connect people to services for untreated health and mental health disorders; connect people to benefits and services they are eligible for and third, to promote interagency cooperation.
“We would appreciate personal stories or statements of need for the program to help support the application. The program”s focus is homeless individuals who are experiencing undiagnosed or untreated mental health issues, and the goal of the program is to find them through use of the screening tool, connect with them with the Outreach Worker, and link them to appropriate services,” Owen said.
Public letters are needed by April 2 and should be addressed to Linda Ruffing, City Manager, 416 N Franklin St., Fort Bragg, Ca 95437 or by email to jowen@fortbragg.com. Attn: Fort Bragg Homeless Mental Health Intervention Program.
