PORT ANGELES — People with both brain disorders and chemical addictions would receive the most attention from a Clallam County panel that hopes to supervise new public funds for mental health programs.
The Clallam County Behavioral Health Work Group outlined for county commissioners Monday how it might spend a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax.
The measure is authorized by the Omnibus Mental Health and Substance Abuse Reform Act, better known as the Hargrove Bill, named after the North Olympic Peninsula’s state senator, Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, who sponsored the bill last year.
Commissioners today will call for a public hearing March 28 on an ordinance to adopt the tax — which needs no approval from voters — and on a resolution naming members to an advisory committee.
The tax would amount to 10 cents per $100. A family earning the median income in Clallam County would pay about $20 a year.
For that, the work group says, citizens can anticipate:
* Safer streets — Substance abuse was linked to 60 percent of traffic fatalities in the county last year.
* Better health care access — Brain-disordered and chemically dependent people account for a disproportionate share of patients at Olympic Medical Center’s emergency room, at the Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics clinic and at the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic.
* Better police service — Clallam County law enforcement officers say 80 percent of their time involves mentally ill or drug-addicted people, and 80 percent of Clallam County jail inmates have similar impairments.
* Healthier families — The Clallam County Department of Children’s and Family Services says it removed 24 children from their homes in 2004, 64 in 2005, and forecasts 80 in 2006. Four-fifths of them had drug-dependent parents.
The Hargrove Bill requires the county to set up a therapeutic family court similar to the Drug Court and DUI Court that have proven so successful in Clallam County.
Parents diverted to the court would have faster access to services.
* Fewer cracks in the system — Well-off people have insurance that pays for mental health care. Poor people can access care throng Medicaid. People in the center of the social spectrum have few resources, group members said,
For instance, said Steve Ironhill of West End Outreach in Forks, last week a 51-year-old woman with heroin and methamphetamine addictions could not find a treatment program.
* Better students — Children taken from their families have “far less chance of succeeding across all the areas by which we measure success,” said Bronson West of the Department of Social and Health Services.
