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

Orange County officials announced Friday $7 million in state funding has been secured to support county mental health initiatives — namely, Be Well OC, which provides mental health support to residents and runs the first mental health and wellness campus countywide.

Officials held a press conference at its Orange location, which opened its doors 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 the county of Orange has made a large commitment to mental health and we believe that Be Well OC will not only be a great resource for the county, but in fact will be seen as a model for the entire country,” said Orange County Board of Supervisors 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 be allocated toward the construction of an additional Irvine campus and the remaining $2 million will be put toward a data integration system that officials are currently building.

That system is proposed to help aggregate data between various county healthcare programs to essentially work out better programming and services for people in need of assistance, particularly those that are heavy users of county programs.

It will later incorporate service providers and the community.

“[Heavy users] travel across many of these systems of care without any coordination and so it makes it very difficult for us to be able to provide the wrap-around services that they need in order to address the underlying issues that they have,” said Do. “Because of that lack of coordination, those high utilizers become the most vulnerable to not getting the help that they need.”

State officials, including state Sen. Tom Umberg, state Sen. Pat Bates and state Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris offered their congratulations and support of the county’s efforts to boost mental health, the beginnings of which dates back to at least 2015.

Support our coverage by becoming a digital subscriber.