Amador County Builds Community College Pipeline For Mental Health Workers
Speaker 1: 00:00 For many residents of rural California. Uh, higher education seems out of reach. That's true for Amador County, Southeast of Sacramento where there is no community college, no public university. Our California dream collaboration is reporting this fall on solutions to some of the challenges facing the state and Amador County. A unique scholarship fund is now providing an educational stepping stone for residents who want to work in mental health. Sammy K Yola of Capitol public radio reports. Speaker 2: 00:32 That's fine. Speaker 1: 00:34 About a dozen students trickle into Amador county's learning center and take a seat for orientation. They range in age from early twenties to late fifties Speaker 2: 00:44 I'm Bailey and I'm, this is my last class for this YouTube again, Becka, I have four kids, eight and under. My name's Tiffany. To be honest with you, in my life I've been in active addiction. Speaker 1: 00:57 They're all after the same thing. A credential in human services which can open the door to entry level jobs in health and social work. For the last five years, amateur County has covered tuition for people who want to pursue this specialty. They take courses online through coastline community college in orange County. The scholarship board looks for residents with a personal tie to mental illness or substance abuse. Speaker 2: 01:21 We have a great need in Amador County for trained people who can deal with the issues that we have here. Speaker 1: 01:30 Mac Newell is with the Amador community college foundation, the nonprofit that runs the learning center. She says the goal is to create a pipeline of people with lived experience to fill gaps in the counties health workforce. They've given out 44 scholarships so far. About a third of students have graduated or are already working in the field. Six more will graduate this fall with either certificates or associates degrees in human services. Speaker 2: 01:54 The scholarship program trains our next generation of social workers and human services experts, but it's also pulling from the community that needs those resources. Speaker 1: 02:07 When Tammy Montgomery heard about this option in 2017 she was struggling with depression and PTSD. She lost three children in a car accident a decade ago, and then her home burned down in the Butte fire of 2015 Speaker 3: 02:21 we lost even the baby albums, the pitchers, everything. So it was, it was really bad at the time and I did not deal with it well, Speaker 1: 02:30 so she moved to Amador and decided to go back to school at age 56 it was her first class in 25 years and even filling out the online application was a struggle. Speaker 3: 02:40 She came over and she goes, you're done. And I'm like, I don't know how to turn the computer on. Speaker 1: 02:44 After a year of help from the community college foundation, Montgomery became the student rep on the nonprofits board and began tutoring other learners. She got her human services certificate and we'll finish her associates degree this spring and then just scroll on a recent evening at the center, she was huddled over a laptop showing a new student how to install the grammar app for essay writing. The book markets right here. Okay. Amador is one of a handful of counties leveraging a special pot of state mental health dollars to create what's known as peer support workers with a certificate. They can work with addiction recovery centers, clinics, or other agencies. The hope is for these workers to make a small dent and a mental health worker shortage that's worse in rural California, but unlicensed community workers alone can't solve the problem. Janet Kaufman is a health policy expert at UC San Francisco. Having folks in the system with lived experience who really understand what it's like is very important, but you know, they don't have extensive training in psychotherapy. Speaker 1: 03:48 What I would say is I think we need to make investments in the behavioral health workforce up and down the line. Still in rural communities like Amador, peer support training creates a pathway for people with limited options. Tammy Montgomery is volunteering with a hospice group. She goes to schools to work with grieving children. It really got me out and started my life over again. It gave me something to do for purpose. California is one of only two States in the country that doesn't have a standard certification process for peer support workers in mental health. Governor Gavin Newsome just vetoed a bill that would have expanded this workforce citing funding concerns. Sammy K cap radio news. Joining me is Capitol public radio reporter Sammy K Yola semi. Welcome. Hi, thanks for having me. Now a few times in your report you mentioned gaps in the mental health network and a lack of trained therapists in some areas of the state. Speaker 1: 04:46 How bad is that shortage? So it really varies where you are, but it's a clear divide between rural and urban areas. And you'll hear people in rural places talking about just having no mental health professionals needing to drive an hour or several hours to go see someone. And that's because a lot of these rural areas, they have a difficult time recruiting therapists and social workers and especially psychiatrists. People with those levels of degrees don't always want to work in these smaller places where the cases are can be tougher and the pay can be not as good. And so the university of California, San Francisco was able to actually track the number of psychiatrists per 100,000 residents. And I mean obviously many counties are small, they only have if you thousand residents. But these, these numbers are extrapolated. But there are some counties like Alpine and Glen and Plumas County at Trinity County that have zero per 100,000. Speaker 1: 05:47 There are others that have as few as between one and four psychiatrists per 100,000 people. So you can just imagine those psychiatrists get entirely booked up. Some of them don't accept medical or some of them don't accept private insurance. So depending on what coverage you have and where you live, you may have no options other than to drive a really long way. And if you're already hesitant about seeking mental health help, that can just be a huge insurmountable barrier. Now in a series of reports, last year you looked into the mental health problems in Amador County and other rural communities in Northern California. Can you give us an idea about what you found? Sure. So yeah, I spent about six months reporting out the high suicide rate in Amador County at the time I was there and had the third highest suicide rate in the state. But it's closely followed by its neighboring counties. Speaker 1: 06:39 Um, all kind of in the Northern part of the state, all with relatively small populations. Um, high levels of poverty, high levels of drug and alcohol abuse, um, a lot of unemployment. And so, you know, that's one factor is just sort of this culture, um, of hopelessness for some people. A lot of people feel a little stuck there. Um, they don't feel that they have good job options or good educational options. So you combine that with substance use disorders and it can be a recipe for some bad mental health problems. And the, the thing that really stood out as I interviewed people who struggle with mental health, people who work in the mental health field, people who had lost loved ones to suicide was how hesitant people are to talk about it. There is just, um, a stigma against mental illnesses, a stigma against seeking help. Speaker 1: 07:32 So a lot of people, you know, they acknowledge that something's wrong privately. And they, I talked to people who wouldn't even tell their, uh, their husband, they won't even tell their mom. They wouldn't tell their, their best friends. Um, and they would just sort of keep it in and try to soldier on. There's this idea that you can kind of get through it, um, and that you, you know, that it's weak. It's a weakness to complain. Um, I talked to a woman who, uh, was an EMT and she had severe PTSD and, um, was, was often contemplating suicide, but she didn't want to be on medication. Um, because she, she felt like being on medication was, was, um, that, that she wouldn't, that wouldn't be strong, um, that she should just be able to take care of it herself. Now there's a concern that peer support workers with limited training may not have the capacity to help people who really need it. Speaker 1: 08:22 Is that concern something you heard from the people at the learning center themselves? So I think the people at the learning center know that what they're getting is, is relatively limited. They're getting either a human services certificate or an associate's degree in human services, which, um, you know, it's, it's, it's a low level, but it can be a stepping stone to getting a bachelor's or eventually a master's for them. It's, it's a good start. It's, it's a lot of them. It's the first education they've had since high school and not everyone finished high school. And I think they see their role as, as a very kind of community role because they have experienced mental illness. They have maybe been through the County system and they know what it's like to try to get these appointments and, and try to keep them. And so they know that they're not going to be prescribing medication or doing intense counseling, um, that, you know, those roles are higher up the food chain and we need to fill those roles too. Speaker 1: 09:16 But you know, I think what they're arguing is that if we fill the bottom, um, it is certainly better than having nothing. Now governor Newsome just vetoed a bill that would have expanded this peer support program. What does that mean to the future of this community college effort in Amador County? The bill would have created a formal certification for peer support. So as I mentioned, the students I wrote about, they're getting, uh, certificates in human services, which is like, it's kind of a vague, uh, realm, but it's all in the social work area. So, you know, some people end up working for hospice or in grief counseling. Um, some people end up working at the food bank, some people work for homeless shelters. So there, there are a lot of different things you can do with human services. The peer support certificate just would've been more specific to mental health counseling and it would have standardized the training that everyone gets. Speaker 1: 10:10 So like in Amador County, everyone's getting human services certificate, but in other counties they might be getting a different kind of certificate but doing the same kind of work. So the bill would have, would have created basically, um, a ticket to work in peer support and everybody would've been the same. But without that, I think students are still gonna seek out programs. They might be all different programs, but these people with lived experience, they really, truly want to help. Um, and they want to feel like they're trained and have information to give out to their friends and neighbors. And so even without a formal peer support certification, I think the peer support fields will continue to grow. And I think in a lot of these rural counties where recruiting high level professionals is such a challenge, growing peer support is going to be crucial. And the good thing is that there is funding for it. Speaker 1: 10:58 The mental health services act has an entire workforce development category and a lot of rural counties are using those funds, those state funds, um, to build peer support. And that money is there, you know, exactly for projects like this. So I do think we'll continue to see it grow. Um, you know, in, in his veto message, governor Newsome, you know, just mentioned some of the costs associated with the peer support certification process and those could come back up in the budget process. Uh, so yeah, we, you know, I, I'm hopeful, I think that there are enough people out there that, that will push this movement that it will keep going. I've been speaking with capital public radio reporter Simon Yola. Sammy. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.
