Santa Maria's mentally ill want to know if “Foodbank day” will continue at the Gatehouse.

They want to know if their first paying jobs at Growing Grounds will be taken away.

And most of all, they want to know if the letters, signed petitions and their presence at meetings was enough to persuade the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors not to cut county funding to the mental health programs they so desperately need.

“It's so hard talking with clients, because I don't know what's going to happen either,” said Tammy Franck, program manager at the Gatehouse.

Mental health organizations in Santa Barbara County were left in limbo by a vague decision from the Board of Supervisors last month to hold off on slashing the county's adult mental health budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year until annual budget hearings in June.

In the meantime, community-based organizations faced with potentially debilitating cuts are scrambling to supplement the income they stand to lose.

“We're looking at programs and seeing what we can do to keep them operative with grants or donations,” said Jill Bolster-White, director of Transitions Mental Health Association.

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Transitions is based in San Luis Obispo County, but it has several contracts for programs with Santa Barbara County, such as the Gatehouse, the only social rehabilitation and drop-in center in Santa Maria since 1993; Growing Grounds, a horticultural therapy and vocational training farm in Santa Maria; and the Lompoc Drop-In Center, the only supportive meeting place in Lompoc for the mentally ill.

Gatehouse provides weekly workshops for more than 40 clients in areas that include mental health recovery, hope, education, personal responsibility and self-advocacy, Franck said.

They recently put their self-advocacy education to work as more than 50 people confronted the Board of Supervisors in April with the fact that mental health support could mean life or death for many people.

On “Foodbank Tuesdays,” Franck said, the clients are taken to the Santa Barbara County Foodbank on West Foster Road where Gatehouse purchases food and gives free bags of it to the clients.

This allows clients, who are often on fixed budgets from Social Security or disability, to bring home free groceries or use the kitchen at Gatehouse for a home-cooked meal.

Growing Grounds then offers clients the hope of getting off government assistance.

Joe, a 37-year-old Orcutt man who has been working at Growing Grounds for 18 months, said the four acres of produce and flowers may not seem like much, but without it many people would be lost.

“It gets me out of the house, socializing with people, money in my pocket, exercise and fresh air,” said Joe, who asked that his last name not be used.

He said that the county meeting in April, which he attended along with more than 150 people from the mental health community, didn't accomplish much.

“They were sympathetic,” Joe said. “But they didn't seem to realize that it would cost so much more money in the long-term if they closed these programs.”

Growing Grounds program manager Ariela Gottschalk said the agency is trying to prepare for the worst while hoping it can maintain a skeletal structure.

“It's kind of a knee-jerk reaction to completely wipe out a program,” Gottschalk said. “But the county and Transitions worked hard to build a strong infrastructure, and to throw it away seems irresponsible.”

Joy, 43, is an employee at Growing Grounds and a client of both the Gatehouse and Telecare. She also asked that her last name not be used.

Telecare Corporation is a for-profit business that contracts with the county to provide mental health services. It operates one of the only residential facilities and one of the two programs that provides mental health services, case management and medication management in the North County. And both programs are at risk of losing county funding.

Telecare has begun planning for the closure of its AB 2034 Homeless program, now called H.A.R.T., after being notified by the county in February of impending budget cuts, according to an e-mail message from Regional Director of Operations Cynthia McCoy.

“The clients are very upset. The uncertainty of their future health care, mental health service and support is quite unsettling for them,” McCoy said.

She added that she was uncertain about opportunities for alternative funding, but that meetings are in progress to discuss transition plans for the clients.

“If the budget isn't changed then I could lose everything in a day, said Joy, who relies on these mental health programs.

At the Board of Supervisors' April 22 meeting, after four hours of discussion, county staff members were directed by Chairman Salud Carbajal to “look at a myriad of options” to avoid the drastic cuts.

The proposed adult mental health budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year called for nearly 50 percent cuts to community groups' contracts with the county along with reductions in county mental health staff and services.

After the uncertain conclusion at the supervisors' meeting, county CEO Mike

Brown advised the community-based mental health organizations to operate based on the worst possible scenario until the budget hearings in June.

Sam Womack can be reached at 739-2218 or swomack@santamariatimes.com.

May 3, 2008