County Officials Plan Experiment With 1-Stop Social Service Centers : Government: The locations will imitate federally run disaster facilities by giving residents access to several agencies at once.

Thrown together at disaster aid centers by the earthquake, Ventura County social services officials said Tuesday that they will try to stay together after the recovery to serve the public better.

County Public Social Services Agency officials said they plan to spend an anticipated $7.5-million federal disaster aid grant to open full-time, one-stop social service centers in Simi Valley and Fillmore.

The centers will imitate federally run disaster centers by giving residents access to several county agencies at once--including those handling mental health, public health, welfare and job counseling.

If the centers work well for the estimated 18-month life of the grant, officials would seek federal, state and county money keep them open and set up others in cities around Ventura County, said Barbara Fitzgerald, chief deputy director of the agency.

“We’re seeing this as the model for the future,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve always talked about a multi-service center. . . . But this gets us to do it earlier.”

The social services department heads agreed Tuesday at their weekly meeting that if the experiment works, they will try to make the one-stop centers permanent, Fitzgerald said.

Bob Benedetto, disaster coordinator for the county Department of Mental Health, said the one-stop centers could bring counseling and other services to mental health clients and disaster victims who might not seek such help otherwise.

“I think that it would help by providing an informal counseling atmosphere” for disaster victims who are seeking help from other county agencies, Benedetto said. “People who normally would not want to come into a therapist’s office . . . would be more willing to come in to get services and, in a very informal way, to be able to talk to someone about the stress they have in terms of the earthquake.”

As recovery from the quake winds down, the one-stop centers could help welfare recipients get job counseling, for example. Immunizations, medical checkups and other public health services could also be provided.

And mental health caseworkers could steer their clients to other agencies for help with food and housing, Benedetto said.

“A lot of these people don’t know how to get these services because they’re afraid” of officials due to their illness, he said. “We would just walk them over, and we would stay with them while they fill out the form. . . . We’d be able to be a coach for them.”

Fitzgerald said the centers would also include counselors from the county Office of Alcohol and Drug Programs and caseworkers for county programs on adult abuse and in-home support for the elderly.

“It’s sort of a holistic approach to human services,” she said of the centers, which could be set up in Fillmore and Simi Valley within a month.

The question is where they will be housed.

Disaster coordinators for Supervisors Maggie Kildee and Vicky Howard are looking for county office space, Fitzgerald said.

If county-owned space cannot be found, the agencies will have to consider renting other space, said Melody Rafelson, an aide to Howard.

The search may be especially difficult in Fillmore, where so much of the business district was damaged in the earthquake, said Kathy Long, an aide to Kildee.

Once the centers are set up, however, they could help provide services to the public more quickly in case of another disaster, she said.

“If the pilot’s successful . . . and cost-effective, what you’d have in place is a system,” Long said. “All you’d need to do is increase the volume of staffing in case of disaster.”