Mayor Gordo Wants Mental Health Services Provided to Pasadena Residents Improved

[UPDATED] Mayor Victor Gordo intends to expand the mental health care programs in Pasadena to accommodate more people struggling with mental health issues amid the pandemic.

The mayor expressed his views during the City Council’s discussion on the services being provided by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health for the residents of the county and of Pasadena on Monday, May 2.

At the meeting, Gordo said the City Council will form a working group, consisting of council members and representatives from the city’s health department and L.A. County mental health department to identify and address mental health care concerns in Pasadena including the lack of outpatient services to mental health patients and other issues.

Pasadena is part of L.A. County’s service planning area 3. At the meeting, Gordo pointed out that the L.A. County Department of Mental Health only has two outpatient providers in the service area and these could be found in East San Gabriel Valley and Arcadia.

“Service area 3 has 31 cities, 29 school districts and I would argue that while that’s a good start, we have to look at how to better provide services in a decentralized manner.”

“The services that are rendered at the moment are not meeting the need and so I think, working together, we can model how to better provide those services to people who are in need. COVID has really highlighted the need for mental health services. We all see it around our families and friends and neighbors in all age groups so I think we should recommit ourselves to addressing this issue,” Gordo said.

According to Theion Perkins of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, a budget of $60 million was allocated for the mental health services for Pasadena for fiscal year 2021 which covers May 1, 2020 to April 30, 2021.

She said only $50 million of the total funding was utilized.

During the same period, over 16,200 individuals were served in Pasadena, according to Perkins.

Perkins reported that out of the 20 mental health providers in Pasadena, including Pacific Clinics Pasadena Family Services, PC Child + Family Specialty Services and Almansor Education Center, six providers are no longer accepting beneficiaries to date largely due to staffing issues.

“It happens at the end of the fiscal year but not to the level that you have as many. It might be one or two in a service area,” said Perkins, referring to staffing issues. “But again due to the pandemic and just the attrition in the clinical world of mental health we have lost a lot of staff across the board.”

Meanwhile, Jonathan Sherin, Director of L.A. County Department of Mental Health said the department is looking at granting Pasadena authority over the mental health services in the city as he noted that addressing the mental health crisis is becoming so challenging to date.

“We are really playing with the idea of giving some of our authority which was granted by the state and federal government to Pasadena under our umbrella, to be essentially a satellite of a special team plan, which could allow you to more effectively put things together based on the local needs and give you a bit of autonomy within the guidelines of a plan,” Sherin said.

“We’re looking at other cities as a next level partnership where we’re going to be working together leveraging each other’s platforms to have a bigger impact,” he added.