Mentally ill homeless will be sought out in pilot plan

By Timothy Pratt (contact)

Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002 | 9:53 a.m.

The state agency responsible for mental health announced Monday that Westcare, a Las Vegas substance abuse rehabilitation center, was awarded a $500,000 contract to launch a pilot program for the homeless mentally ill.

The program's intent is to get mental health counselors and other professionals into the streets to identify and treat the homeless mentally ill, a large and mostly unattended population in Southern Nevada.

"The whole idea is to get people into the washes and under bridges in order to help these people where they are," said Carlos Brandenburg, administrator for the Nevada Division of Mental Health and Developmental Services, the agency that will oversee the program.

It is set to kick off after the contract is approved on Oct. 8 and will run until June 30, 2003.

"This project will provide something that's been lacking for years," said Linda Lera Randle-El, a member of the selection committee that chose the winning proposal for the grant and director of Straight from the Streets, an outreach program.

Currently, three outreach workers working for nonprofits seek out homeless people with mental health and addiction problems who may otherwise avoid shelters or other programs. With the state's pilot program, that number may triple, Brandenburg said.

"This is key to helping the homeless, since the literature tells you that about one-third of the homeless may be mentally ill, and up to 70 percent of that population may have multiple disorders, such as addictions," he said.

Helping the mentally ill homeless will also help the community, since this population winds up costing the community money through such services as hospital emergency rooms and jails, said James Osti, vice president for Westcare.

"With the project, we hope to find more cost-effective ways to help these people, through aggressive outreach," he said.

Westcare was chosen in part because of its experience with drug abuse and supportive housing for the homeless, said Kevin Crowe, also a member of the selection committee and chief of planning and evaluation for the mental health division.

The project will also provide as yet unavailable data on the mentally ill homeless, in part through a partnership with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Even though we've always known that street population's biggest problem has been mental illness, there's never been anything to get out and assess who these people are and what they need," Lera Randle-El said.

She said this has been a problem when sweeps of the homeless are carried out, because city planners don't have the know-how to deal with the mentally ill population in the camps being broken up.

At the same time, the program's intent isn't to fix mental illness in the streets.

"The idea isn't to detox and cure hundreds of people, but to learn what works and what doesn't," Lera Randle-El said.