LA County agrees to provide real homes

In a settlement agreement signed on April 18, 2003, plaintiffs and defendants agreed to specific objectives for serving children and young adults who depend on Los Angeles County for mental health services. Those objectives include providing:

• Prompt, necessary, individualized mental health services in their own home, a family setting, or the most homelike setting appropriate to their needs;

• Care and services needed to prevent removal from their families or to promote reunification, and to meet their needs for safety, permanence and stability;

• Stability in their placements; and

• Care and services consistent with good child welfare and mental health practice.

County must provide stability

The settlement also sets out what Los Angeles County must do to fulfill those objectives. Most crucial are steps the county agreed to take to:

• Improve consistency in decision making;

• Expand wrap-around services;

• Use team and family group decision making;

• Identify the mental health needs of class members;

• Provide needed services;

• Increase stability; and

• Provide more individualized, community-based emergency services.

Community services cost less

The class action lawsuit, Katie A. v. Bontá, was filed in July 2002. In it, attorneys for the class charged that the county relied too heavily on institutions. They pointed out that home-based mental health services cost the county about $6,000 per child per year. Keeping the same child in an institution for a year could cost the county up to $270,000.

Institution closes

In the settlement, the county agreed not to place children under 18 at McClaren Children’s Center in ElMonte. In fact, the county closed McClaren and moved the remaining children to other homes in March 2003.

Seven organizations involved

Attorneys for plaintiffs were Melinda Bird and Marilyn Holle of PAI; Mark D. Rosenbaum and Ben Wizner, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California; Lin Min Kong, Laura Diamond and Katrina McIntosh, Center for Law in the Public Interest; Carol Shauffer and Alice Bussiere, Youth Law Center; Ira Burnim, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law; Ronald C. Peterson and Carlyle W. Hall, Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe; Robert D. Newman and Kimberly Lewis, Western Center on Law & Poverty.