WE WON. The State Auditor agrees with Mental Illness Policy Org! MHSA Funds are wasted. Write letters to editors!!!! dj Here is summary bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/2012-122.pdf This report concludes that Mental Health and the Accountability Commission have provided little oversight of counties’ implementation of MHSA programs, particularly as it relates to evaluating whether these programs are effective. We expected that Mental Health and the Accountability Commission would have used a process to monitor, guide, and evaluate county implementation that built on their broad and specific MHSA oversight responsibilities and also incorporated best practices in doing so, but that is not what we found. However, looking to the future, the opportunity exists for the state entities responsible for oversight to better demonstrate the effectiveness of the MHSA. Because of the minimal oversight Mental Health and the Accountability Commission provided in the past, the State has little current assurance that the funds directed to counties—almost $7.4 billion from fiscal years 2006–07 through 2011–12—have been used effectively and appropriately. Effective late June 2012, legislation transferred most of Mental Health’s oversight role to the California Department of Health Care Services (Health Care Services). Health Care Services is moving forward with these oversight responsibilities, which includes collaborating with the Accountability Commission on its evaluation efforts, but it is still in the early stages of planning and it is too soon to tell whether its efforts will address all of our concerns. Further, we also expected that Mental Health would have taken steps to ensure counties received the guidance necessary to effectively evaluate and report on the performance of their MHSA programs, particularly given the MHSA’s focus on accountability. However, Mental Health did not provide explicit direction to the counties on how to evaluate their programs effectively, including directions for setting reasonable goals, establishing specific objectives, and gathering the data necessary to meaningfully measure program performance. Thus, it is not surprising that our review of four county departments—Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, County of Sacramento Department of Health and Human Services, County of San Bernardino Department of Behavioral Health Administration, and Santa Clara County Mental Health Department—found that these counties used differing and inconsistent approaches to assess and report on the performance of their MHSA programs. Some counties could not effectively demonstrate through their processes that their MHSA programs are achieving the stated intent. Counties were also inconsistent in collecting data related to program goals and how completely they analyzed and reported on those data to determine if stated program goals were achieved.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 16:08:49 +0000
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