Doctors and nurses are ready when a child has a medical emergency and is rushed to the hospital. But if that same kid had a mental health emergency, Santa Clara County wouldn’t have a hospital that could treat minors.
For decades, the issue went unnoticed, until one day a friend of Santa Clara County supervisor Joe Simimian asked why Santa Clara County had a program for children and teens. I asked him if there were any mental health inpatient facilities. He was convinced it couldn’t be true. I was. That was nine years ago.
“I was definitely wrong in so many ways,” he said last week when the groundbreaking ceremony for a new child and adolescent behavioral health facility took place at the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
That mistake is now corrected. VMC has begun construction on his 207,000-square-foot behavioral health facility on its San Jose campus. The new wing has 77 beds, 14 of which are for children, 21 for his teenage children, and 42 adult beds in a separate safe section. The children and teens portion of the facility provides inpatient and outpatient psychiatric and medical care, emergency psychiatric services, and emergency care. A skywalk has been integrated into the design for easy access to comprehensive medical services throughout the VMC campus. A parking lot is also planned. Scheduled to come online in fall 2025, the project is estimated to cost $422 million. Funding comes from county budgets and the state’s Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program.
The need for these services has never been greater. Mental health problems among children and their teens have exploded since the pandemic, and many are not returning to school due to ongoing anxiety and depression. In addition to this urgency, attempted suicide among teenage girls. To break the crisis, school districts across the county are funding health centers and more counselors.
Supervisors originally approved the new facility in 2017 with the goal of being online by 2023. Meanwhile, Simimian said more than 600 children are transferred each year for care to facilities in Vallejo, Sacramento and Santa Rosa.
“It’s just hell for them to separate children from their families during the most difficult times of their lives,” he said.
It’s important to understand what that hell means. Families need to be aware that children have traveled hundreds of miles alone and are in peril. These transports are by ambulance, Makes travel even scarier. Children leave familiar surroundings and faces behind, and families are too far away to visit every day. This is a distressing situation for families with children suffering from severe medical conditions. Once these services are online, the human suffering should be rectified.
However, without an annual budget to maintain quality of care, this is not sustainable. Behavioral health services are often the stepchild of county health care budgets. Supervisors Simitian, Susan Ellenberg, Cindy Chavez, Otto Lee, and Sylvia Arenas are big proponents of what makes this facility rise off the ground. But if the economy isn’t strong, regulators expire and budgets change. The first cuts are usually made in social services, including mental health. Protecting children in mental health crisis must be a priority now and in the future.
It’s surprising considering one of the nation’s richest counties does not provide mental health inpatient services to one of its most vulnerable.
Simitian told me:
Certainly, especially in today’s climate. Let’s make sure this much-anticipated ward is up and running by 2025, bringing mental health services to the counties where children and their families live.
Moryt Milo is an Editorial Advisor for San José Spotlight.contact Morite [email protected] or follow her @morytmilo on Twitter. Catch up on her monthly editorial here.
