July 31, 2020
DREDF and co-counsel Disability Rights California (DRC), Goldstein, Borgen, Dardarian & Ho, and the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of DRC and its constituents with serious mental health disabilities against Alameda County and Alameda Health System. The lawsuit challenges the County’s failures to provide adequate community-based services to people with serious mental health disabilities causing unnecessarily cycling through the County’s locked facilities, including the John George Psychiatric Hospital and the Santa Rita Jail. The complaint details how Black people with serious mental health disabilities are harmed at staggeringly high rates by Alameda County’s failures to provide intensive and appropriate community-based services. The lawsuit seeks increased linkages and access to community-based services and decreased reliance on institutionalization. […]
Tag: Community Based Services
Sanchez v. Johnson Opinion
August 8, 2005
The Governor and the legislature now face a very large problem that has begun to destroy community services for people throughout California. Although the federal Court said it couldn’t act, the state can and must deal with this crisis. Providers serving persons with disabilities in the community have seen insubstantial increases in payments since 1989. Although the state has collected $254 million in additional federal money for the disabled since this case started none of it has been used to pay for services for the disabled. The system cannot continue hemorrhaging skilled workers and replacing them with untrained persons who could be earning more at fast food restaurants.