By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, The Chronicle of Social Change, October 9, 2019
Alex Briscoe didn’t know much about how local governments pay for mental health care when he joined Alameda County’s Health Care Services Agency in 2004. But he knew there was a problem.
Briscoe had come from a job at Children’s Hospital Oakland where he saw kids routinely turn up in the emergency room in serious psychological distress. These children had nowhere else to go. There was no support system to help kids who’d experienced trauma, or to catch mental health problems before they escalated, Briscoe recalled.
At the county, Briscoe soon realized a big part of his agency’s job was to secure federal Medicaid dollars to pay for health care services in the community. But the county wasn’t getting enough of that funding to cover what was needed.
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