County taps $28 million in mental health funding

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors has approved an updated mental health plan utilizing $28 million in mental health funding — and local experts say the new measure, passed Jan. 24, has the potential to address a lack of mental health services in Sonoma Valley.

The funding comes from Proposition 63, a statewide personal tax surcharge of 1% on incomes over $1 million, which is earmarked for county mental health services expansion and funding.

Supervisor Susan Gorin, whose district includes Sonoma Valley, said it was not yet clear how much of the $28 million would go to mental health services here.

“No information yet. But we are working on services for the Valley,” she said.

The help can’t come soon enough according to experts working in local mental health services who last month gave a presentation on the state of their operations to the Springs Municipal Advisory Council.

“We dedicated this meeting to mental health and suicide prevention,” said council chair Maite Iturri during the Jan. 11 meeting. “We wanted to create some space for people in our community doing work to support our community members.”

The presenters told similar stories of low staffing, low budgets and limited resources.

“In terms of mental health resources overall, Sonoma, I would say, is lacking,” said Victoria Rohrer, a licensed marriage and family therapist and a co-owner of Sonoma Valley Family Therapy.

Rohrer said mental health services in the Valley are as much in demand as they were in the height of the pandemic. She added it’s hard to find services here that accept insurance.

“We’re a little more isolated in Sonoma, and people don’t want to drive super far,” Rohrer said. However, “Mental health in general does not get the funding it needs.”

Rohrer said she used to work for a Sonoma County program within the Department of Health Services called the Crisis Assessment, Prevention and Education Team, or CAPE, which provided accessible mental health services to students through their schools.

According to Rohrer, the program was well-loved by the schools, parents and students, but was cut by the county.

She also mentioned a grant that allowed her practice to provide a therapist at one of Sonoma’s schools twice a week, but the funding only lasted one semester.

Rohrer said students K-12 are lagging in their emotional development due to the social isolation they faced during the pandemic. She keeps track of places to send teenagers to connect with one another, such as programs offered by the Sonoma Community Center, but even those can be focused on niche interests that not all of her patients are interested in.

Pooling resources

The Sonoma Valley Mental Health Collective, an aggregate of 17 community-based agencies, has been attempting to pool resources in order to implement a system of mental health support and therapeutic services to serve the wide range of needs in Sonoma Valley.

The groups banded together in April 2022, and the initiative was spearheaded by the Hanna Boys Center, which is currently working on building a mental-health hub on its property, where the services will be based.

The goal of this hub is to be able to serve a wide swath of the local population, something Rohrer believes is crucial.

“It’s never just one person that’s part of the challenge,“ Rohrer said.

“Especially with our youth, investing in their mental health early can save us tons of money, and make their lives better.”

Support network

Leslie Nicholson, another presenter at the Jan. 11 meeting, said that roughly a decade ago she and her husband were struggling with their teenage son’s behavior, but that they had nowhere to go for support.

So in 2015 she started RISK Sonoma, an organization that provides resources, information, support and knowledge for parents seeking support and access to services that will help them and their families.

“We wanted to create something that would provide more parents with support and not have to build from square one,” Nicholson said.

The group holds forums and informational sessions about topics such as suicide, fentanyl, binge drinking, cannabis and social media. Nicholson believes the more difficult the topic, the more parents need to learn how to discuss it.

“That’s what we’re trying to provide is information and discussion,” Nicholson said. “We’re not immune here in Sonoma to any of that. It’s everywhere.”

According to Nicholson, since the pandemic, parents have been much more aware and concerned about their children’s use of social media.

Resources for the group, however, are limited. It’s run by five women, all of whom work full time. Nicholson, the director, is a librarian at El Verano Elementary. The organization’s phone number is simply her cell phone.

She says parents call her from all around the Valley, and she always picks up no matter the time of day – because she never wants to send a concerned parent to voicemail.

“You’re not alone, you’re not judged, you’re not isolated,” Nicholson said. “I want to be there to be another source of support.”

“Just knowing where to go, that’s a challenge,” Nicholson said. “The demand for mental health services is so crazy that people get discouraged.”

Other services

Two other groups presented information on their organizations at the Springs meeting in hopes of spreading the word on where community members can find accessible and affordable care.

Elizabeth Storm, health program manager for the County of Sonoma’s Behavioral Health Division, spoke about the suicide prevention programs the county provides.

Storm said her team – which provides help through case management, coping skills, medication management and suicide risk assessment – has offices in Cloverdale, Guerneville, Sonoma and Petaluma, and can also meet with people via video calls or home visitation.

Storm noted the services include alcohol and drug use treatment for youth, peer-run self-help centers, family support, crisis services and more.

Cindy Sutton, substance abuse program manager at Hanna Boys Center, also gave a presentation on her group’s services.

The presentation focused mainly on the Hanna Boys Center’s new Mental Health Hub. The physical center is currently under construction, but she said staffers are already providing services on site and at other location in the county.

Those services include individual and family therapy, support groups, therapeutic activities, psychological assessments, developmental screenings, parenting workshops and bilingual services, Sutton said.

“We’re all talking to each other and we’re all continuing to try and find way that we can work together to do really some wraparound and whole-person care in this community,” added Leslie Peterson, director of contracts and business development at Hanna Boys Center.

“The collective is just a group of mental health people that are really concerned about the mental health of our community as a whole.”

Contact the reporter Rebecca Wolff at rebecca.wolff@sonomanews.com.