COUNTY TO MERGE AGENCIES; BEHAVIORAL, SOCIAL SERVICES UNITS TO LINK UP.

Byline: David Greenberg Daily News Staff Writer

In a hotly debated, 3-2 vote, county supervisors decided Tuesday to consolidate the Behavioral Health and Public Social Services agencies into a single massive department designed to improve service to mentally ill residents.

Supervisors Frank Schillo and Judy Mikels, the board chairwoman, voted against the plan to create the Human Services Agency, saying they wanted to more closely review the proposal to ensure it would not create a $171 million bureaucracy that harbors inefficiency.

But the push from some 20 advocates - limited by Mikels to minute-long presentations - persuaded Supervisors John Flynn, Susan Lacey and Kathy Long to get the merger under way. They argued that a mega-agency would provide a more coordinated effort to provide job training, welfare and other benefits to the 7,000 mental health and 6,000 substance abuse patients helped each year by the Behavioral Health Agency.

``Anything we do today must be client-based,'' Lacey said.

The transition is expected to be complete by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

There were few details given Tuesday about how the new Human Services Agency would operate. However, officials say they do not anticipate any job losses because the merger was designed to make services more effective, not to save money.

A study conducted by Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group of Sacramento concluded that the merger would have no financial impact on the county unless the Mental Health Inpatient Unit, which brings in millions of dollars a year in state revenues, loses its license during the transfer. However, county officials said they consider that unlikely.

The issue was first raised during budget hearings in June 1997, when Lacey asked the Chief Administrative Office to look into a possible merger. The CAO recommended that the mental health and alcohol and drug boards form separate committees to study the BHA and PSSA operations and recommend any restructuring plans within six months.

The supervisors, however, were no so patient.

Advocates of the merger maintained that radical advances in medicine have allowed mentally ill patients - most suffering from schizophrenia or manic depression - to be more frequently processed into mainstream society. As a result, they said, more patients need the services provided by PSSA, such as housing, life skills training, employment, substance abuse rehabilitation, CalWORKS welfare benefits, and child and adult protection.

``The client is stabilized very quickly in most cases,'' said Susan Kelly, a licensed therapist who sits on the county Mental Health Board.

Barbara Tolerton, a mental health nurse, argued that the merger was needed to stop the ``erosion'' of care for the mentally ill in the public and private sectors.

``It seems like the most cost-efficient way to provide some sort of semblance of quality care,'' she said.

But James Matthews, a Ventura resident whose son has suffered from schizophrenia for more than 25 years, said he fears the merger will create a giant bureaucracy that will reduce the quality of care.

``(The county) wasted money in the past, and they are going to do it again,'' he said.

Carol Luppino, also a Ventura resident with a mentally ill son, said she fears that patients will be expected to perform tasks of which they are not capable, such as holding down full-time jobs.

``PSSA frightens me because I don't want to see the mentally ill treated as if they can do things by choice,'' she said.

Tim Tice, a Ventura psychiatrist, predicted administrators will at times make decisions with cost savings instead of the patients in mind.

``We feel there's a strong danger of diminishing doctors' roles further,'' he said.