Orange County receives $ 7 million from state to fund mental health initiatives

Orange County officials announced on Friday that $ 7 million in state funding has been secured to support the county’s mental health initiatives, namely Be Well OC, which provides mental health support to residents and operates the first county-wide mental health and wellness campus.

Officials held a press conference at its Orange site, which opened in january of this year. Another will be located in Irvine.

“The commitment at Anita [Drive, where the Orange campus is located] and Irvine shows that Orange County has a strong commitment to mental health and we believe Be Well OC will not only be a great resource for the county, but will in fact be seen as a role model for the whole. of the country, ”said Orange County Supervisory Board Chairman Andrew Do.

“For the first time, we will have an integrated and well-coordinated infrastructure for mental health at the county level,” Do said.

About $ 5 million will go toward building an additional campus in Irvine and the remaining $ 2 million will be spent on a data integration system that officials are building.

This system is proposed to help aggregate data between different county health programs to essentially develop better programs and services for people in need of help, especially those who are heavy users of county programs.

It will later integrate service providers and the community.

“[Heavy users] travel through many of these systems of care without any coordination and therefore it is very difficult for us to provide the comprehensive services they need to resolve the underlying issues they have, ”said Do. “Because of this lack of coordination, these heavy users become the most vulnerable to not getting the help they need.”

State officials including State Senator Tom Umberg, State Senator Pat Bates and State MP Cottie Petrie-Norris praised and supported the county’s efforts to improve mental health, whose beginnings date back to at least 2015.

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