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Public Education & Policy :: Archive CNMHC News Alert, June 27, 2001 AB 1421 Put On Hold Advocates have slowed down AB 1421. It has been made into a two-year bill. Assembly member Helen Thomson (Davis) has chosen to hold the bill in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee until next January, 2002. Why? Our count indicated that AB 1421 had very little support in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, not enough support to pass out of Committee. The bill did not have the votes needed to get out of Committee. The width and breath of the mental health and related communities that opposed the bill was equally daunting. The state wide organizations that opposed, at different levels of opposition, included: the California Network of Mental Health Clients, California Association of Social Rehabilitative Agencies, Protection and Advocacy, Inc., California Association of Mental Health Patients' Rights Advocates, National Association of Social Workers, California Psychological Association, California Mental Health Planning Council, California Mental Health Directors Association, California Council of Community Mental Health Agencies, California Foundation of Independent Living Centers, ACLU, and the Judicial Council. The author stated in a press release that her actions were the result of receiving no funding in the legislature's budget. However, the language of the bill states that "assisted outpatient commitment" may occur in any county in which services as described in the bill are available. In other words, the bill does not restrict court ordered outpatient commitment to counties that get grants, but to those counties that provide the specified service - namely, PACT/ACT programs. It was more because of lack of support than lack of money that Assembly member Thomson changed AB 1421 into a two-year bill. AB 1421, what had been described as a "runaway bill", ran into a wall of resistance. For the last three years in California, vehicles carrying ideas of expanding forced treatment and involuntary outpatient commitment have repeatedly been driven back by immovable opposition. The resistance continues to gather strength of numbers and purpose. Commenting on the successful resistance to AB 1421 in California, the Mental Health E-News of the New York Ass'n of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, (NYAPRS) writes, "This is a particularly extraordinary repudiation of the national media campaign that has been conducted by groups like the Treatment Advocacy Center that has relied on frightening the public with outrageous violent characterizations of folks with psychiatric disabilities, a campaign that has immeasurably threatened all of the public education and anti-stigma work of the last decade." Building a Voluntary System of Care AB 334 (Steinberg), SB 931(Burton) and SB 891(Escutia) are initiatives that continue California's effort to build a voluntary client friendly mental health system, All three bills are moving along in the legislative process. AB 334, which outreaches and provides comprehensive integrated services to homeless people with psychiatric disabilities, received a $10 million augmentation in the Legislature's budget, a tribute to the legislature's will to build a voluntary community mental health system as well as the quantifiable success of this approach. To help these bills in their legislative journey, write or contact the appropriate Committee Chair and Members: SB 891 To be heard in the Assembly Health Committee - to be announced Assembly Member Helen Thomson, Chair SB 931 To be heard in the Assembly Health Committee - July 10 Assembly Member Helen Thomson, Chair AB 334 To be heard in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee - July 11 Senator Deborah Ortiz, Chair |
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