One Mother's Testimony: 2/2/10

I am here at the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors representing scores of Santa Barbara families dealing with mental health and substance use disorders who are or will loose their loved ones to suicide, overdose and homelessness. Shame, grief and despair has hidden the extent of the many of these tragedies from our community. Now that the homeless are dying in plain sight we can no longer ignore them.

How many deaths is it going to take before we provide a welcoming shelter to people without homes in our community AND address the roots causes of homelessness, including untreated trauma, mental illness and substance use?

We are beginning to work with the Coroner's department to document the unprecedented number of suicides, overdose and homeless deaths in our community over the last year. These problems overlap.

There are big gaping holes in our so called "system of care" at every step of the way from the first break to the 15th break. The few slots provided by the alcohol drug and mental health department are filled.

We must prevent people from falling into homeless and falling into despair by coming together as a community and providing more than band-aid solutions.

The truth is that someone with a mental illness or a substance use problem needs more than a jail sentence, and more than a meaningless check in at an outpatient center, and more than a couple of weeks in a detox bed, and more than a bunk in a crowded room filled with other untreated people. These are band-aid solutions at best.

We need hospital beds and residential treatment facilities with professionally trained staff: A context where there’s enough safety that healthy relationships can thrive and recovery can happen.

Our Task Force on Co-Occurring Disorders is a beginning. It was started by moms and dads who have watched their children spiral downwards into hopelessness. It has brought together treatment providers, criminal justice, and family members to attempt to come up with a solution. Craig Park from Cottage Hospital has recently joined our ranks and hopeful that Cottage Hospital will play a leading role in addressing this complex crisis.

It's time that the private sector and the public sector, the faith community and individual citizens come together to think out-of-the-box.