New Simi Clinic Promotes Peace of Mind : Services: Relocated county children’s mental health center features picture windows, adjacent park. Move unites youth agencies.

Quiet and roomy, a new county children’s mental health center in Simi Valley was touted Monday as a vast improvement over the old clinic.

For one thing, it sits in the East County Courthouse, cheek by jowl with fellow agencies that also handle children’s cases, such as the Public Social Services Agency and the Probation Department.

The therapists’ offices have five-foot-high picture windows and a park outside--features that often help ease young patients’ anxieties.

And the waiting room is no longer a cramped 12-by-18-foot space shared by hyperkinetic children and severely depressed or mentally ill adults.

“I think the real gain behind moving our services here is the under-one-roof concept,” said Martin A. Akimoto, who runs the county Mental Health Department’s Options therapy program for children. “The residents will be able to come and use all these services under one roof.”

Fully one-third of the clinic’s 100 patients, ages 3 to 18, are teen-agers with criminal records who are referred to mental health workers by the county Probation Department.

Another third of the patients are referred by the Children’s Services division of the Public Social Services Agency, and the remaining third of the children come from special education programs around the county, said mental health official Don Kingdon.

“We’re right down the hall here from probation services,” said Kingdon, chief of the Children & Adolescent Services division of the county Department of Mental Health.

Mental health staff now can work alongside welfare and probation workers, managing each case jointly and sometimes conferring with patients together, he said.

“Most mental health departments in the state wait in their clinics to see who’ll show up,” he said. “We try to work more directly with the kids.”

While Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels officially opened the clinic Monday, patients have been coming for nearly two weeks to visit its three staff social workers, a psychologist and a part-time doctor, clinic workers said.

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The Simi Valley mental health clinic used to share quarters in western Simi Valley with the adult mental health services.

Patients grew especially uncomfortable in the waiting room, where children--many with attention-deficit disorder or other disorders that cause hyperactivity--had to share chairs in a tiny space with depressed or mentally ill adults.

“It was uncomfortable for the kids and for the parents,” Kingdon said. “Any time you have adults and kids confronting themselves and confronting each other, the kids may be thinking, ‘Is that going to be me when I grow up?’ ”

Heidi Christensen, the staff psychologist, said, “This is so much nicer for us.”

The new clinic not only puts the mental health staff closer to other agencies who work with their patients, it also provides a far more pleasant treatment atmosphere, she said.

In the old clinic, “They were confined, there was no place for them to play,” Christensen said.

The new clinic’s windows give her “a lovely view,” she said. “And the really nice thing, as far as doing therapy, is the availability of the park” outside.

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Often, Christensen said, young patients find it easier to talk about their troubles while walking outside rather than sitting in a closed office.

The new clinic--shoehorned into former Supervisor Vicky L. Howard’s community meeting room--cost about $37,000 for new walls, fixtures and wiring, as well as furnishings and equipment, Akimoto said.

Howard had long campaigned to bring a wider array of county services to Simi Valley at the East County Courthouse, which was underused for years following its 1990 opening. In addition to courtrooms and the clinic, the building now houses offices for the public defender, district attorney, Corrections Services Agency, Building and Safety Department and Public Social Services Agency.