Let’s get behind solutions for programs that work to combat homelessness

[captainDave]

JTB: For a long time, I believe that Washington ranked pretty high in terms of mental health for handicapped people. This was largely due to the state-funded private group home program that ran successfully for about thirty years until the crony corprocrats took over. It seems to me that there would be more than enough money to take care of a significant portion of the mentally ill if the state decentralizes it’s iron-fisted control over patients.

Like so many other things, it is the enormous centralized bureaucracy that is killing the ability for our society to take care of the needy.

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[JoB]

captain Dave..

i think that the Salvation Army does a fine job of offering substance abuse programs to people who can benefit from their religion based program…

but even you have admitted that the problem of homelessness extends far beyond the confines of those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

taking that into account…
that list of resources you posted boiled down to one..
the current Nickeslville tent cities…

oh.. the irony.

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[JTB]

captainDave, I believe there is a difference between developmentally disabled people (with and without mental health issues) and people who are physically sound but encumbered by significant mental disorders. The first can benefit from a group home setting because of physical limitations in ways that might not work so well for a fully mobile but mentally impaired person. Certainly the professional training and certification requirements for those broad categories would be different.

There is increasing interest in acute and subacute residential treatment programs as an alternative to or next step following inpatient psychiatric care. Again those programs require a fair amount of staffing by qualified mental health and occupational health professionals. Beyond that, I’m not familiar with data about the numbers of people in WA or King County participating in public or private outpatient programs but I’m guessing those numbers might include homeless people.

My understanding is that in 1989, WA shifted significant portions of the budget for mental health services away from the State and to the county governments. Perhaps the budget is set in Olympia but much of the administration occurs on a county level. So from one perspective, that affords greater fragmentation and oversight of services and presumably less bureaucracy at the State level. I’m not surprised mental health services would be seen as an opportunity for private versus state providers. A key point of privatization of public services is to reduce bureaucratic overhead and supposedly improve quality through the magic of the private sector. But as we’ve seen in similar moves in the prisons, that is often accompanied by worse quality, less accountability, more abuse, etc. Nevertheless, I do think the acute and subacute residential treatment concept deserves more examination and it seem likely to me that it would be easier to craft private programs than have them created by the state. Obviously, oversight is a big issue and if the State is going to give money to a provider it sure as heck better be able to determine if it’s getting what is being paid for. So you have some degree of bureaucracy as a matter of necessity.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by JTB.
• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by JTB.

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[Author]

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