Countywide : New Mental Health Provider Wins Bid

The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to replace a longtime county mental health provider--a move that officials of the ousted firm say could interrupt the therapy of hundreds of emotionally disturbed Orange County youngsters.

Costa Mesa-based Child Guidance Center of Orange County, which had worked with the county 22 years, was outbid by about $190,000 on a contract worth about $1 million, officials said. Child Guidance Center withdrew its bid after officials recommended that the board award the contract to Western Youth Services.

“We just couldn’t impress them with our reasoning,” said Rex D. Gaede, president of the Child Guidance Center, which treats about 200 mentally and emotionally disturbed children. “They wouldn’t listen to us.”

The center’s current contract expires on June 30.

County mental health experts warned that, although the decision to switch providers will save the county money, it may take a toll on the patients because interrupting a patient’s therapy is invariably a traumatic process. That’s true whether the patient is an adult or a child, other experts added, but it is generally more pronounced with children, who often form strong bonds with their therapists.

Timothy P. Mullins, the county’s director of mental health, acknowledged that the decision to drop the Child Guidance Center was not easy to make, but he said the center was simply outbid.

“It’s our goal to minimize those problems, though, and we deal with transference all the time,” Mullins said. “Candidly, had it been close, we probably would have called it the other way, but it just wasn’t.”

Gaede said that the guidance center’s services could be seriously affected by the switch and that the center could even be forced to close its doors unless it quickly develops a new clientele.

Although the Child Guidance Center’s contract with the county ends next month, Gaede warned the county supervisors Tuesday that cutting off the program abruptly will increase the difficulty that youngsters have in making the switch.

The supervisors unanimously approved the new contract, but several echoed Gaede’s concern and directed staff to develop a transition program aimed at easing the burden on patients affected by the turnover.

“That’s our primary goal,” Mullins told the supervisors. “We’re not going to push these kids out in the street.”

In other action, the supervisors approved a grant to the Shortstop Program, a highly acclaimed juvenile delinquency prevention effort whose request for funding next year had been denied by a county advisory group. Shortstop supporters had asked for at least $40,000 from the county to extend it into the Latino community with a Spanish-language version of the program.

“This is a pro-active prevention service which hopefully will be the first and last stop for many of our troubled youths,” said Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, a strong supporter of Programa Shortstop. Shortstop attempts to divert minor juvenile offenders away from committing more serious crimes by a combination of education and “scared-straight” techniques such as locking the youths in holding cells.

The supervisors allocated $45,000 to the Programa Shortstop, as well as funding several other small community-based groups dealing with gang counseling and other juvenile delinquency issues. Five percent cuts to several other groups and the deletion of two struggling programs allowed the supervisors to make the additional grants.