As people with mental health crises overwhelm California’s hospitals, jails and homeless shelters, counties across the state are gradually embracing residential respite houses located in neighborhoods and staffed by peers — people who have been consumers of the mental health system.
When Clare Ross couldn’t afford her $300 health insurance premium on top of her student loan payments, she turned to the Santa Cruz Women’s Health Center.
Two goals drive health care reform and the dramatic changes now reshaping our health care system: cutting costs and improving care. Accountable Care Organizations are one cost-saving measure rolling out across the U.S., a change pushed by the Affordable Care Act. But how much they will save – and when savings will start – remains an open question.
As the number of jail and prison inmates with mental illness increases, addressing the problem is becoming even more critical. In the 1980s, 8 percent of jail and prison inmates in the state had serious mental illness. Now, 20 percent do.
Brad Schwartz had been homeless, living mostly outside, for the last 30 years. Today the 57-year-old is cleaning and repairing a cottage he now calls home, thanks to a homeless housing initiative in Santa Cruz called 180/180.
Schools weren’t necessarily providing all of the information girls felt they needed. Roxanna Sanchez, a junior at Greenfield High School at the time, worked on the original report, and recalls a real need for more health information there. Budget cuts had eliminated health classes at local high schools and teen pregnancies were high in Greenfield.
Santa Cruz County’s Sheriff’s Department is applying for a state grant to change the way it houses some inmates, creating a stepping stone to independence, they say, by creating a minimum-security rehabilitation and reentry facility with 64 private rooms at the county jail.
Ladies Involved in Putting a Stop to Inner-City Killing wants to halt the cycle of violence by addressing women’s roles in securing guns for boyfriends, husbands and others who can’t legally purchase them themselves.
Volunteers plan to help solve one of the more vexing questions of reform: how to reach the many people who don’t understand they are eligible for subsidies on the exchange or the expansion of Medi-Cal and then help them navigate the process of signing up for insurance.
Family nurse practitioner Myra Howard runs the Buellton Medical Center in Buellton, California. She’s also the majority shareholder in the clinic. But the law still requires that her practice is supervised by a physician.