Orange County Lags in Mental Checks of Students

SANTA ANA —  Orange County’s Health Care Agency has fallen so far behind in providing mental health assessments for special education students that a state law governing the teaching of emotionally troubled youths is regularly being broken.

Educators who refer students to the county agency for evaluation said they are alarmed by the growing waiting lists for mental health services, and have reported the problem to state officials in hope that more money will be allocated to correct it.

“When we make a referral to the county, it’s our feeling that the student needs [attention] right away . . . not in three or four months,” said Lucinda Hudley, director of special education for the Santa Ana Unified School District, which has 35 students on a waiting list.

“When we make a referral, we’ve tried everything we can to help,” she added. “The long waits only compound the problems these students face and delay the treatment they need.”

Last month, Orange County special education administrators requested an administrative hearing from the state that they hope will result in additional funding for the county’s Children & Youth Mental Health Services Division, which must provide mental health assessments before instruction plans required by state law can be prepared.

Health Care Agency officials concede that some of the evaluations are not being done quickly enough to permit adherence to state law. But they say the agency simply doesn’t have enough mental health counselors to handle the increasing number of cases that school districts are referring to it.

In an effort to reduce the backlog, the agency has asked the county Board of Supervisors to hire 20 additional staff employees and to contract with more child psychiatrists. The board will consider the request in September when it votes on a final budget.

“This is one of the agency’s highest priorities,” said Timothy P. Mullins, director of mental health for the county. “We hope it will help us deal with the additional demand.”

Teachers and school administrators said emphasis should be placed on hiring more counselors who speak Spanish or Vietnamese. Students in heavily Spanish-speaking schools in Santa Ana and Anaheim appear to be enduring the longest delays in receiving mental health evaluations.

“About 71% of the students in our district speak limited English,” said Hudley of the Santa Ana schools. “It’s hard to establish a relationship with clients if you work through an interpreter.”

Some frustrated parents aren’t waiting for the additional funding and have hired private attorneys to push both the county and school districts to complete mental evaluations of their children.

“The clients are told they have to wait for months. Then I get involved, and right away there is no more waiting list,” said Joan Honeycutt, an attorney who specializes in representing special education children. The county “has to comply with the law. Unfortunately, some parents just don’t realize that.”

Special education administrators from around the county have been meeting for months to discuss ways of dealing with the backlog.

Students are referred to the county’s mental health department when school officials decide they need individualized instruction. Students are only referred to the county agency for a formal mental health assessment if their emotional problems are clearly interfering with their schoolwork or bothering classmates.

“It takes a lot before a school psychologist will refer a student,” said Donald Greene, who coordinates special education programs for schools in Fullerton, Buena Park and La Habra. The county agency receives “the most serious cases, and we believe they should be handling them in a timely fashion. . . . We want the county to follow the state timeline.”

Special education administrators estimated that more than a third of the 1,000 students they refer to the county mental health department annually are placed on waiting lists. State law requires that the county give students mental health evaluations quickly enough that a complex, individualized instruction program can be in place within 50 days.

But school administrators said dozens of students remain in limbo beyond this deadline, because the Health Care Agency lacks adequate staffing. In north and central Orange County, educators said some students have waited three or four months before being evaluated. Hudley said that during especially busy periods, Santa Ana students have waited 100 days or more.

Educators acknowledge that the county does place a high priority on cases that school districts flag for immediate attention. But the long waiting lists faced by other students only delay the kind of counseling and instruction these troubled children need.

Officials said students referred to the county agency for mental health assessments range from very aggressive teenagers who pose a danger to themselves and others to depressed youths who don’t communicate with classmates and teachers.

If treatment and counseling prove unsuccessful, the students are often placed in private special education schools where they receive more attention and supervision.

Beyond the negative effects on the students themselves, school districts risk losing federal funding for special education unless the county fully complies with the 50-day deadline, said Ronald Wenkart, general counsel for the Orange County Department of Education.

“They have to comply with the law,” added Honeycutt, the attorney who said she has represented more than a dozen parents concerned about the waiting lists. “If they don’t have proper resources, it should be a problem for the Legislature or the supervisors. It shouldn’t be the parents’ problem or the children’s problem.”

County health officials said they always strive to complete evaluations within the time limit. “We try to reach that, because we could be violating [students’] civil rights if we don’t. That’s my interpretation of it,” county mental health chief Mullins said.

The evaluations are performed by the same division of the Health Care Agency that has come under fire for improperly medicating young people sheltered at the Orangewood Children’s Home.

The special education administrators said they are satisfied with the quality of services provided by the Children & Youth Mental Health Services Division but complain that it lacks sufficient resources.

“They’ve always been very responsive to our needs,” said Robert White, a special education administrator in the south county. “I think they do a remarkable job with the [resources] they have.”

Dennis Roberson, a special education administrator in the Anaheim City School District, agreed. “They have always been very supportive and willing to work with students through many different situations,” he said. “They are able to respond to us when we have a special case that needs urgent attention.”

The backlogs began occurring as demand for mental health services was increasing for both the county and local school districts. White said that in south county the number of special education students requiring such services has increased tenfold over the last decade.

Officials attribute the surge to a variety of factors, including an increase in the number of students suffering through the effects of prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol. Counseling has also become less of a stigma in recent years, they said.

“With many single-parent homes, children don’t have the family support and community support,” White said. “They are left alone. Schools have to pick up the slack.”