Following yet another year of brutal heatwaves and devastating wildfires, Californians have the chance to tell elected officials they support urgent climate action by voting for a $10 billion climate resilience bond on the November ballot.

During an unprecedented budget surplus two years ago, California earmarked $54 billion to forge “an oil-free future” and protect residents from the extreme effects of climate change. That surplus morphed into a multibillion-dollar deficit within a year, after rosy projections of rising revenues from income taxes failed to materialize, forcing Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers to cut and defer billions from their ambitious climate spending plans.

California’s budget problems will likely continue, analysts say, as will the climate change-fueled disasters that have battered the state. To provide a stable source of funding for urgently needed climate action, legislators passed a bill in July that seeks voters’ approval to authorize the state to borrow $10 billion to underwrite climate resiliency projects. Newsom signed it the same day. 

Now scientists, policymakers, climate experts and environmental justice advocates are among those urging voters to support the Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, Drought Preparedness and Clean Air Bond Act of 2024, on the ballot as Proposition 4. 

“Multiple excellent studies show that paying now will save lives and save dollars,” said Ellie Cohen, CEO of The Climate Center, a nonprofit dedicated to reducing climate pollution, and a member of the Yes on 4 campaign. “Even a short-term delay in adopting strong climate policies dramatically increases the cost of decarbonization and risks irreversible ecological impacts,” she said.

A warmer climate is likely to permanently alter ecosystems, trigger a wave of species extinctions and reduce crop yields through more frequent heat waves and drier soil, a 2021 report by the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation Policy & Technology warned. 

Failing to prepare for catastrophic wildfires, drought, extreme heat and other extreme events could cost the state an estimated $113 billion in damages a year by 2050, according to California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment. Most of the costs come from lives lost, impacts from drought and damage to coastal properties and inland regions hit by the type of weeks-long flooding that killed thousands and bankrupted the state during the 1861-1862 megaflood. 

Yet $113 billion a year is likely an underestimate. The assessment did not account for the costs of several other climate-related disasters, including health harms and property damage from wildfires, illness and death from extreme heat and impacts of drought on water quality, wildlife and ecosystems. Damages from the calamitous 2018 wildfires cost nearly $150 billion, a peer-reviewed study found. 

Investing in resilience pays

Responding to climate disasters costs exponentially more than investing in resilience, experts say. Every dollar spent on climate preparedness saves $6 on disaster relief, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates. That means investing $10 billion in climate resiliency now could avoid a $60 billion cleanup and recovery bill down the road.

If voters approve Prop. 4, state officials will immediately start funding projects to improve access to safe drinking water, reduce risks from wildfire and drought, make food systems more resilient, restore habitats and protect communities, farmland and ecosystems from climate risks. 

“Bond funds are an appropriate and very effective way to fund many of the climate change-adaptation actions that many cities and counties are planning right now but don’t have local revenue sources to support,” said Laura Engeman, an environmental scientist at the University of California, San Diego. “A lot needs to be done around coastal resilience, in terms of environmental restoration as well as the connection between restoration and public infrastructure. These bonds provide a way to plan a lot of that.”

For example, many jurisdictions are looking at restoring sand dunes, wetlands and other ecosystems to protect infrastructure like roads and water systems, Engeman said.

“We saw a lot of degradation and erosion at our beaches over these last two years, which were big storm years,” she said. “You’re seeing a number of different cities right now that are looking at immediate needs for repair, recovery and building what we call ‘a coastal resilience buffer’ into the beach and shoreline landscape to buy a little bit of time to figure out how to actually adapt.”

Other projects include wetlands restoration, which involves upgrading bridges to expand the space for water to move and drain during floods, and retooling watersheds that channel polluted floodwaters into public spaces. “The bond is a good use of public dollars because there are a lot of benefits to the broader community,” Engeman said. “We’re saving money on the back end by spending money up front.”

Prop. 4 would support loans and grants to local governments, Native American tribes, nonprofit organizations and businesses to reduce the risks and impacts of a warming world. 

The largest share would go to safeguarding drinking water and dwindling groundwater supplies, and protecting rivers and streams from toxic pollution ($3.8 billion), followed by investments in wildfire prevention and extreme heat mitigation ($1.95 billion), protection of natural lands, parks and wildlife ($1.9 billion), protection of coastal lands, bays and oceans ($1.2 billion), transitioning to clean energy ($850 million) and supporting climate-smart agriculture ($300 million). 

Advancing climate justice 

Prop. 4 ensures that at least 40 percent of funds go to projects that benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, in keeping with the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative. 

“A significant part of this bond prioritizes the frontline communities that bear the brunt of climate change impacts and impacts from the fossil fuel industry,” said The Climate Center’s Cohen.

California officials released an updated plan to protect communities from extreme heat in 2022, noting that “every corner” of the state will be affected by higher average temperatures and more frequent and severe heat waves. Farmworkers are increasingly vulnerable to heat-related illness and death, particularly in regions with chronically bad air, as Inside Climate News reported last year. Prop. 4 would allocate $450 million to help primarily disadvantaged communities and vulnerable populations adapt to extreme heat.

Access to safe drinking water has been a human right in the Golden State since 2012, yet close to 400 public water systems fail to meet drinking water standards. Nearly a million residents, primarily in low-income communities and communities of color, lack clean water in their homes, according to the state water board. Another 1.5 million people rely on water systems at risk of failing. 

The bond earmarks $610 million to provide safe, affordable, reliable sources of drinking water, including to tribal communities, and to develop drought-contingency plans and monitor for contaminants like PFAS “forever chemicals,” which have been detected in supplies serving more than 25 million people, the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council recently reported.

Some of California’s most endangered resources would also benefit. The bond allocates $170 million to improving air quality, public health and habitat around the beleaguered Salton Sea, which supports more than 120,000 migrating shorebirds, several species of concern and hundreds of other bird species southeast of Palm Springs. Another $50 million would go to restoring the state’s critically endangered salmon populations.

The proposition has broad support from environmental groups, environmental justice advocates, labor unions, water agencies and renewable energy companies. Opposition includes the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which called it “reckless to use borrowed money” and Republican legislators led by the minority leader of the state Senate, Brian Jones (R-San Diego), who believes bond debt will only worsen California’s budget crisis. 

Repaying the amount borrowed with interest is likely to cost taxpayers $400 million a year over 40 years, a state legislative analyst said, ultimately costing $16 billion.

It’s not certain voters will accept more debt. Despite California’s liberal reputation, voters tend to be conservative when it comes to bond measures, survey expert Mark Baldassare of the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California recently reported. Even so, 65 percent of likely voters said they would vote yes on Prop. 4 in a survey PPIC released this week.

The Climate Center’s Cohen acknowledged that many don’t like paying more to support government action. “But the bottom line is, our fossil fuel economy has resulted in a climate crisis that I liken to a runaway train,” she said. “We’re all standing on the track, it’s accelerating towards us and we are not doing enough to slow it down.”

She sees Prop. 4 as just one step in the right direction to help California weather the challenges ahead. “The climate crisis is escalating every day, and we have to start taking bold actions,” Cohen said. “And that means bold investments to make a difference for our health and well being and the future of our children.”

The post California Ballot Asks Voters to Invest in Climate Solutions appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The unrelenting abuse by her husband continued for months even after the San Francisco mother succeeded in getting a restraining order against him. In 2020, she told police that he had started using remote technology that was connected to the car apps of their 2016 Tesla Model X family car to terrorize her.

She alleged that she would often return to her vehicle, only to find the doors open or locked, or the heat turned on, or the horn honking, or the vehicle’s ability to charge turned off.

“He had the resources to run an all-round torture campaign against me,” the woman told this reporter in a telephone interview.

Cases of the kind of technology-enabled stalking and other forms of harassment Kailey (she did not want her real name used because of ongoing litigation) experienced are on the rise as automakers are adding more and more sophisticated features into their vehicles and turning cars that were once considered sanctuaries by their owners into “computers on wheels,” said Robert Harrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California. Some call them smart phones with wheels.

But that could soon change, and vehicles could once again become safe havens for their owners if California Governor Gavin Newsom signs the Access to Connected Vehicle Service bill authored by Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine. The bill sailed through the legislature last month. Newsom has until the end of this month to sign it.

SB 1394 was jointly co-authored by Assemblymember Akilah Weber, D-La Mesa and Sen. Angelique Ashby, D-Sacramento. It would establish a legal process for the rapid termination of a domestic abuser’s access to app-connected remote and GPS-based vehicle technology.

“Abuse of these apps can be very threatening and traumatizing to survivors,” Min said in a telephone interview earlier this week. If enacted, California would be the first state in the nation to have such a bill.

A ‘lifeline’ for DV survivors

Multiple women’s rights advocates who supported the bill say a car is a lifeline to survivors. Having safety and privacy that a car can provide is “crucial to my clients,” said Prof. Jane Stoever, director of the UC Irvine Law Domestic Violence Clinic, and a co-sponsor of Min’s bill.

Smart phone apps allow owners to check a car’s location if they forget where they parked it or to lock or unlock it remotely. The car owner can grant access to a limited number of other drivers.

Drafted with input from a number of survivors, women’s rights advocates and some car manufacturers themselves, Min said he hoped SB 1394 would address domestic violence abusers exploiting in-car location tracking to harass and intimidate survivors.

“In this rapidly growing digital age, bills like SB 1394 are a step in the right direction,” noted Shobha Hiatt, a co-founder of Narika, a Bay Area-based support group for South Asian survivors of domestic violence. “More states should follow suit.”

A woman in Southern California discovered an Apple AirTag plugged under her dash by her abusive husband that allowed him to track her movements in real time. When she asked him about it, he dismissively said, “Oh, you found it. I’ve been looking for it.” The couple is now in the midst of custody arrangements for their three young sons.

Kailey sued her husband in State Superior Court in 2020, claiming sexual battery and assault. She included Tesla as a defendant, accusing the carmaker of negligence for continuing to provide the husband access to the car even though she had a restraining order against him.

She began her requests to Tesla to end access in 2018, a year after the police began investigating her complaints. The carmaker told her that as long as her husband’s name remained on the vehicle’s title as co-owner, they couldn’t deny him access.

Superior Court Judge Curtis Karnow sided with Tesla that the woman had no proof “other than her belief and imagination” that her husband had used the car’s technology to stalk and harass her, according to court transcripts. Both husband and wife had “a right” to use the car technology, he wrote. At their request, both Kailey and her husband have been identified only by their initials in court documents.

In the early part of the police investigation, Tesla had told police that the remote access logs they were asking for were only available within seven days of the events recorded, according to the lawsuit.

Kailey lost the case and has relocated out of California, she said. The couple decided to sell their car. Their divorce and custody issues are pending.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

AAI concerned about potential for harm

Other automakers offer similar tracking and remote access features, although some of them have taken steps to prevent the misuse of data their vehicles track.

In a May 23 letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation (AAI), a technology-focused trade group for automakers and suppliers that represents 98% of car and light trucks sold in the United States, stressed that it was concerned about the potential for abuse of connected vehicle services to stalk or harass domestic violence survivors. Disclosing location-tracking data to an abuser could “create a potential for significant harm,” the AAI wrote.

Min’s bill would address many of those concerns. It would require carmakers to disable an abuser’s access to connected vehicle services within two business days of receiving a request from a survivor. Documentation, such as proof of legal possession of the vehicle, or a domestic violence restraining order that awards vehicular possession would be enough to sever digital access with their abuser even if they hold a joint title, according to a press release from Min’s office.

Kailey said she was happy that the bill had made it to the governor’s desk because survivors like herself should not have to go through what she did.

“The reason I bought that car was because I thought it was safe,” she said.

The post Domestic Violence Abusers May No Longer Be Able to Track Their Partners With Their Apps appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Uncertain what to do, we dialed 311, San Francisco’s non-emergency helpline. Seventeen minutes later, a red van arrived, carrying members of the city’s Street Crisis Response Team. Jay told them he was schizophrenic. The paramedic recognized him from previous calls and greeted him. Looking at Jay’s digital records, a member of the group realized his prescription had been refilled about two weeks prior, but Jay didn’t remember picking it up.

As they spoke, it became clear that Jay had previously been placed under involuntary psychiatric detention, also called a “5150 hold.”

That fall day, Jay asked to be detained again.

[ Read also: “You Report an Unhoused Person in a Mental Health Crisis. This Is What Happens Next” ]

That was how he had gotten a dose of Benadryl, one of two medications he used to manage his condition, he said. Benadryl is among the antihistamines that can help control anxiety. Schizophrenia requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms have subsided.

“They give me my pill with a 5150,” he said.

The paramedic bristled. “That’s a lot of resources just to get one pill.”

Jay was one of thousands of people last year who fell into San Francisco’s complex, reactive, strained system for treating severe mental health and drug-related crises. As with many of the people who enter that system — including those who are unhoused or are detained without their consent following a call from an alarmed observer — Jay had received temporary care, entailing multiple involuntary psychiatric holds, that failed to address his long-term problems. That left him back on the streets to fend for himself or, with the help of passersby, try again to get the help he needed.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the public discussion about homelessness and mental health in San Francisco has focused on the people who desperately need care, but who reject it. Jay’s story diverges from this common narrative.

“When’s the last time you were at Gen?” the paramedic asked, referring to the emergency room at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the facility in the city with the highest number of beds for people on 5150 holds.

“Today,” Jay said. He had gone there seeking medication, then waited in a hallway for four hours before staff gave him a dose of Risperdal, an antipsychotic that he did not usually take. It had not been effective.

Who responds to mental crisis calls

Emergency service providers may not legally turn people away. For many San Franciscans, this is their only option for accessing medical care.

City officials have made recent efforts to improve the crisis care system. A few years ago, police might have been dispatched to Jay’s call and that would divert them from situations they might be better trained to handle. Today, the city routes mental health-related calls to other teams instead when there is not an immediate safety threat, said a spokesperson with the Department of Emergency Management.

One alternative is the Street Crisis Response Team. It was created in late 2020 and aims to offer trauma-informed care to people facing mental health crises or minor medical issues, potentially reducing unnecessary emergency room visits.

When team members arrive on the scene, they address the person’s immediate needs first — for example, food or a warm blanket — and might connect them with other services and take them to a shelter, sobering center or health clinic.

The many units that respond to the city’s increasingly visible street-level crises cost millions of tax dollars each year: The Street Crisis Response Team’s budget will be $12.3 million for the fiscal year ending in 2025; the Homeless Outreach Team’s budget for the same year will be $8.9 million; and the Homeless Engagement Assistance Response Team was authorized last year to receive one-time funding of $3 million.

City dispatchers must decide which team to send — they might send more than one — relying on the caller’s description of the scene. Calls about mental health crises often ping-pong between 911 and 311 as details emerge, said Burt Wilson, president of the union chapter that represents San Francisco’s emergency dispatchers.

“It’s a huge amount of resources,” Wilson said.

Involuntary detention’s disproportionate impacts

Dispatchers received at least 24,000 calls about mental health crises or attempted suicides in 2023, including calls from bystanders as well as police, based on a Public Press analysis of government records. In many cases, responders couldn’t find the people in crisis.

In the most serious instances, crisis responders put people in 5150 holds, named after the section of California’s Welfare and Institutions Code that defines this procedure. The law permits police and trained medical personnel to detain someone for up to 72 hours if their mental health disorder is making them a danger to themselves or others, or it leaves them unable to provide for their basic needs.

The city recorded nearly 13,700 psychiatric holds for the year that ended June 2022 — but that figure, the most recent available, captures a fraction of the total situation. The number was calculated in a report by a city working group, which found that not all hospitals reported detentions and that the available data did not allow for robust analyses of patient characteristics like race, gender or housing status.

Some people were put on 5150 holds multiple times at Zuckerberg hospital. Using data from that facility in its analysis, the working group found that 425 people received at least two psychiatric holds, 86 had at least four holds and 13 had eight or more. African Americans, despite making up only 6% of the city’s population at the time, accounted for over 42% of people detained four or more times.

Most people who received emergency psychiatric services from the hospital, including 5150 holds and voluntary visits, had experienced homelessness in the prior year.

Numerous service providers told the Public Press that people are more likely to cycle repeatedly in and out of crisis-care facilities when they don’t have access to preventive or non-emergency care, because small problems can become larger ones that require hospitalization.

Experts said also that it’s vital for people to receive culturally competent care — for example, when the health worker speaks the patient’s language or knows which medical guidance will conflict least with social norms.

Underfunded care system

San Francisco has seven designated psychiatric facilities with a total of 187 beds for patients on psychiatric holds, according to the California Department of Health Care Services, which approves facilities for this use.

But not everyone on a 5150 hold gets a bed. The crisis care system is notoriously underfunded, with inadequate capacity and staff. When no bed is available, someone is detained in an emergency room for up to 24 hours.

The 2023 passage of state Senate Bill 43 might further strain the system. The law modified the eligibility criteria for 5150 holds for the first time in decades, making it possible to detain people gravely disabled due to substance use. In response, San Francisco has acquired additional beds. Many other counties are waiting to implement the policy, saying they need more guidance and resources from the state to comply.

Meanwhile, Proposition 1, a separate package of state policies that voters approved by a razor-thin margin in March, could add treatment beds to the system, including those for 5150 holds. The proposition forces counties to redirect a large portion of their mental health spending to housing programs, many of which must benefit unhoused people and veterans. A coalition of mental health organizations and disability advocates opposed the ballot measure, fearing it would cause cuts to vital community-based programs. 

Among its many mandates, Proposition 1 authorized the sale of $6.4 billion in government bonds. Of the total bond revenue, $4.4 billion is slated to pay for building behavioral health facilities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who campaigned for Proposition 1’s passage, has said it will enable adding more than 11,150 behavioral treatment beds.

For people who are able to get beds, their problems are far from solved.

“There’s a perception that if you put someone on a hold, something good will happen for them, like something miraculous,” said Dr. Maria Raven, chief of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. People might think that an intervention by psychiatric workers would set in motion a process that leads to long-term treatment or, for those experiencing homelessness, permanent housing, she said.

“That doesn’t really happen,” Raven said. Instead, “you just put someone where there’s a bed.”

[ Read also: “Mental Health Advocates Call for Voluntary Treatment as Spears Conservatorship Ends” ]

Back on Market Street, the Street Crisis Response Team was trying to find help for Jay in this overburdened system. As they made phone calls to locate a facility that could fill Jay’s medication, one team member tried to comfort him with snacks and water, which he was hesitant to accept.

“Every time I drink something, bad stuff happens,” Jay said.

“You can drink it,” the paramedic told him calmly. “We’re not going to leave you.”

After about 15 minutes and at least four unfruitful calls to multiple agencies, the paramedic suggested that the outreach workers try the Westside Crisis Clinic. They checked its operating hours but found conflicting information online. A call revealed that it was closed for the day.

“It’s very unfortunate that the city runs on banking hours,” another team member said.

Finally, the team found a bed at the Dore Clinic, which provides psychiatric urgent care. Jay could stay there for up to a day. He would have a bed and access to a shower and a phone. That would enable him to call his sister, who could pick him up and help him obtain his medication.

“You can get all your meds tomorrow, something that we can all look forward to,” the paramedic said.

Like many media organizations, the San Francisco Public Press is experimenting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools that aid the creation of images for use in some stories. Nearly all our visual content is produced by humans.

The Public Press is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center, The Center for Public Integrity and newsrooms in select states across the country.

See our related article You Report an Unhoused Person in a Mental Health Crisis. This Is What Happens Next

The post The Often Vicious Cycle Through SF’s Strained Mental Health Care and Detention System appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The article was originally reported and published by MindSite News, a national nonprofit news outlet that reports on mental health.

When Mayra Barragan-O’Brien was 14 years old, she and her mother were smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border in a truck. What she remembers most about the 1,300-mile journey from Guadalajara was the sweltering heat. It was so hot that the bottom of her mother’s black tennis shoe melted from hiding underneath the backseat, and she fainted so often that Mayra lost count.

They were coming to America because the violence in their neighborhood had become life-threatening. Her mother had applied unsuccessfully for a visa several times, and she felt she had no choice but to flee. So she hired a coyote to get them across the border in secret and on to a safer life in San Diego, where they would reunite with the other half of their family.

Their first stop was a Denny’s. As they walked into the diner, Mayra felt an overwhelming sense of relief for more than the air conditioning. She was grateful for her mother, who was still alive, and the menu in front of her since she hadn’t eaten for hours. She ordered a piece of chocolate cake.  

While they waited, she noticed an older white couple at a nearby table were looking at them and talking quietly. One of them pulled out a phone. Mayra didn’t understand English, but the coyotes, who were listening, knew the couple had called ICE, the U.S. agency that enforces immigration laws and detains undocumented immigrants for deportation. “Vámanos, vámanos!” they whispered urgently, hustling the startled Mayra and her mother out to the truck. They drove quickly to another Denny’s, where she finally got her cake. Her mother, shaken, ordered nothing.

From that moment on, Barragan-O’Brien knew she couldn’t talk about how she came to America. A good student, education became her singular focus instead. She went on to graduate high school with honors, but it took her ten years to get an associate’s degree because she had to work — mostly at a warehouse packing frozen meat or driving a forklift. Then came the California Dream Act in 2011, which extended financial aid eligibility to undocumented students. Barragan-O’Brien seized the opportunity. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then a master’s in counseling psychology from Cal State San Bernardino. 

As she pursued this work, she reached back for inspiration to her encounters with a psychotherapist who’d taught her a mantra of hope at her most difficult moment. It was a year before the Dream Act, when she was going through a deep depression after a failed relationship, on top of feeling like there were no opportunities because of her undocumented status. At one point, her family experienced homelessness, but even some subsequent successes backfired. She discovered a relative had called ICE on her family, jealous that they had saved up enough money to buy a house. 

She’d gone to the therapist bawling, she recalls, saying that she had feelings of not wanting to live anymore. He walked her through a guided meditation that kept repeating “And remember there is hope.” She felt lighter after that session, she said, and wanted to be able to do the same thing for others — to ease people’s pain.

California led the way in 2014, allowing undocumented people to obtain licenses as doctors, therapists and for other professions. Illinois and Nevada followed five years later.

Looking back, she is now able to see her despair as a form of “immigration-related trauma — all of the experiences of being a newcomer in a world you don’t know,” she says. “A lot of people aren’t able to name that. ‘Why am I feeling sad? Why am I feeling anxious? Why am I feeling on edge? Why am I snapping for no reason?’ And it’s because of all the trauma that our bodies and our minds endure.”

Barragan-O’Brien’s insights fueled her desire to help others who’d been through the same traumatic experiences she had. She realized she might even have the skills to become a mental health healer and give back in some of the ways that her therapist had given to her. But there were some huge obstacles: As an undocumented person, it was hard enough for her to work legally. How could she ever hope to become a credentialed therapist, licensed by the state to do this work?

Indeed, for her and other undocumented people who want to address the mental health needs of their community, the route to becoming a licensed professional therapist is a hard one. But in California, it’s at least possible: In 2014, the state passed a law permitting undocumented residents to earn professional licenses, including as doctors and therapists. Nevada and Illinois followed suit in 2019.

In California, the biggest hurdle is obtaining 3,000 hours of client work supervised by a licensed professional, a requirement in the field to be able to practice on your own. Immigrants Rising, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps immigrants get into college and start careers, aims to facilitate the process through its Mental Health Career Program.

The goal is to increase the number of undocumented therapists so those in need can work with someone who can relate to their experience.

“We really want to send the message that there are so many contributions folks can bring outside of their immigration status,” says Rocío Preciado, director of mental health and career services at Immigrants Rising. “It’s only when we’re able to connect with others to help process the day-to-day challenges that are oftentimes amplified by the political messages we receive, that we’re able to contribute to the healing of our community.”

The glaring need for Latino therapists

Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. range from 10.5 million to 12 million.  Some 80% come from Latin America, followed by regions in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Since each country and culture is different, so are the mental health needs of each group. No matter where they come from, undocumented immigrants face a slew of chronic stressors — constant fear of deportation, demanding work schedules, manipulation from unscrupulous employers, experiences of trauma from their journey to the U.S. and in their home country. Together, these experiences create  enormous risk of mental health conditions and challenges.

Access to therapy is also more difficult. Getting a therapist — especially an affordable one — is challenging for everyone these days, but for communities of color, finding a therapist who looks like them or speaks their language makes it even harder. In California, for example, only 9% of clinical counseling psychologists identify as Latino, followed by Asian at 8% and Black at 3%, according to data from the Healthforce Center at UCSF.

Immigrants Rising sees the need firsthand. It offers free Wellness Support Groups led by mental health professionals — including groups for women and LGTBQ+ people — to anyone around the country via Zoom. Its Mental Health Connector program, launched in 2019, links undocumented immigrants in California with therapists who are donating their time. So far, over 1,100 people have applied and 174 have been matched. Those who are uninsured or have limited resources are prioritized to see practitioners who have experience with the undocumented community.  

The organization’s Mental Health Career Program began a year later. It allows therapists-in-training to become part of the Connector program and accumulate the hours they need for licensure. It also pairs them with a private practice for clinical supervision and provides professional and leadership training opportunities. Best of all, it gives participants a stipend: $14,000 for year one and $20,000 if they continue on for a second year. 

Currently in the pilot phase, seven participants have completed the program to date, mostly Latina women.  Some, but not all, are currently allowed to stay in the country through DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — the program created during the Obama administration to protect young adults brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and provide them with temporary work authorization. This year, 12 undocumented applicants vied for just six spots, due to the limited financial support the program has obtained from foundations and private donors. Preciado hopes to bring in new funds to increase the stipend and the number of participants.

We want to send the message that there are many contributions folks can bring outside of their immigration status.”

Rocío Preciado, Immigrants Rising

She says many undocumented people want to pursue a career in mental health but are daunted and unsure about whether it’s even possible for them to become a licensed therapist. Preciado hopes to replicate the California training program in Illinois and Nevada, the two other states that have paths to clinical licensure for undocumented therapists. 

A license provides the ability to start a private practice, which provides more flexibility and pay. And while those without DACA status can’t be legal employees, they can start a business or work as independent contractors.

After Barragan-O’Brien graduated with her masters degree in 2020, she needed to accumulate 3,000 supervised hours in order to get licensed. But since she didn’t have work authorization, she had to volunteer her time as an associate clinician in the San Bernardino County School District.

In addition to her time with clients, she spent hours writing clinical notes and evaluations, while also taking on paid workshop gigs with two other organizations and taking care of a young daughter. Barragan-O’Brien calculated it would take her five years to rack up the hours so she could take the licensing exam and officially become a marriage and family therapist. But there was little margin: Applicants must take the exam within six years of obtaining their associate number, which they can apply for after receiving a graduate degree, or start the process over. After two years, she found herself burnt out. 

So she quit volunteering and started researching how she could make a therapy career sustainable. Eventually she came across a single sentence in a California Board of Behavioral Sciences FAQ that said associate clinicians could get a stipend as long as they’re part of a program that encourages underrepresented groups to enter the profession. 

That was the catalyst for her to co-found the Mental Health Career Program. She worked with Immigrants Rising to get it off the ground and eventually went through the program herself last year. It was the first time she didn’t have to worry about paying bills.

“Creating space for us to share our stories and be able to say that I’m not the only one who feels burnt out — it helps us feel like we’re not alone.”

Julio Zamarripa, therapist in training

These days, when she’s not roller skating, spending time with her daughter, podcasting with her sister or listening to the band Hanson, she runs UndocuMental Health. The nonprofit provides training to organizations and educational institutions on best practices when working with the undocumented community — such as hanging art by undocumented artists to signal that it’s a safe space or not calling the police as a first response in case of a mental health crisis. 

Barragan-O’Brien became a legal permanent resident in September. She’s still 250 hours short of the licensing requirement and continues to work with her supervisor, determined to be of service to her community. 

“There’s so much potential among undocumented folks but often they’re not able to see it,” she says. “That’s when I feel the most motivated — when I get to see their face the moment they realize what their potential is and begin to tap into their own agency. That really keeps me going.”

Stranger in a strange land

Julio Zamarripa grew up in a small rural town in Mexico with a big sense of community. As a kid, he’d wake up early to help his grandfather feed the cows or play “farm” with his toys. One day, when he was 10 years old, his mother told him he wasn’t going to school and instead, going to see his dad in America. They abruptly left. He never had a chance to say goodbye to his hometown. 

Zamarripa was angry when he came to the States because he didn’t know the language or culture, and was bullied a lot. In his family, they didn’t talk about emotions. He was a male and was supposed to hold it all in. The feeling of being lost and disconnected continued as he got older, amplified when he was placed in remedial courses at community college.

A career in anything didn’t seem likely until he became part of the Puente Project and met a counselor who was also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Even though she was a citizen, she shared parts of her own journey and made him see the different possibilities for himself. He told her he wanted to be like her one day. She responded, “Mijo, you will do that and more.” 

In 2013, he got DACA status and seven years later, his masters in counseling at the University of LaVerne in California. He was a part of the inaugural Mental Health Career Program cohort. The first year, he saw ten clients through the Connector program; the second year, where he was allowed to continue, he saw 15 clients. In total, he was able to accumulate 1,500 hours. The stipend also covered additional expenses for Zamarripa, like renewing his associate number and some specialized training. Most importantly, it gave him a network of people who shared similar experiences.

“Even within our undocumented community, we’re all experiencing so many different challenges,” he says. “Creating that space for us to share our stories and be able to say that I’m not the only one who feels burnt out — it helps us feel like we’re not alone.”

Zamarripa now has only about a third of the supervised hours left to complete the requirements. Because participants can only accumulate 300 to 500 hours over the course of 10 months, the program is allowing them to continue into a second year. Another challenge is ensuring that clients in the Connector Program show up for therapy sessions, since it impacts not only their progress but the ability of the therapists-in-training to log needed hours. 

All of my supervisors were white. Nobody was talking about how ICE raids were heightening hypervigilance or there might be an increase in domestic violence.”

Mara Sammartino, founder of First-Gen Therapy

Still, feedback from clients who show up has been overwhelmingly positive. And for the trainees, knowledge about paid opportunities and trauma-informed practices has grown. In an evaluation survey Preciado did for the past two years, there was a 113% increase in knowledge around establishing a private practice. Immigrants Rising will soon also provide pro-bono business coaching for participants who completed the program to help build a caseload of clients.

Zamarripa now works as a counselor and instructor at two community colleges, and is also an associate therapist with First-Gen Therapy. Founder Mara Sammartino started First-Gen Therapy as a Vacaville-based private practice in 2022 to provide culturally responsive therapy and create a safe space for budding therapists to learn under her license — something she wishes she’d had when she entered the field 13 years ago.

“One of the hidden pitfalls of becoming a therapist is that you also don’t have supervisors who are bilingual or bicultural,” says Sammartino, who is Nicaraguan-American. “All of my supervisors were white. There was nobody talking to me about how ICE raids were heightening hypervigilance or how there might be an increase in domestic violence.” 

Sammartino hopes efforts like Immigrants Rising can help boost the number of therapists who can relate to their clients’ experiences. As Zamarripa’s clinical supervisor, she trained him on taking progress notes and assessments and acted as a sounding board for him to work through client issues. When she brought him on as an associate at First-Gen Therapy — “our practice,” she called it — it allowed him to continue working with clients paying a sliding-scale fee through the Mental Health Connector Program while also taking on new ones as an independent therapist. 

As a therapist and a trainer, Sammartino recognizes the emotional challenges of vicarious trauma. She’s unafraid to be vulnerable, and doesn’t hesitate to share parts of herself as a way to connect.

“Do you know how many times I’ve told abuelitas I work with that I have to cancel because my son is sick? And they’ll be like, ‘Put Vicks Vapor Rub on his feet and make sure you put some socks on. And please send me a picture of your son to make sure you did it correctly,’” Sammartino says, adding that she promptly sends them a picture. “That’s the thing about providing culturally-responsive care. I am not bound to the white experience. Nor am I bound to the Latino experience. I am bound to the experience that I’m living in at the moment.” 

She encourages Zamarripa — whom she calls “the platinum golden goose,” since being male and Latino in the field is rare — to do the same. Many of his clients identify with him. He lets them know they don’t have to share their story over and over again if they don’t want to — and that ultimately, they’re the expert in their own lives. His job is to give them tools and to bear witness.  

But when it does happen that a client says something that echoes an experience of his own, and he feels it in his core, he’s learning to draw from his own story. Recently, he had a man who was trying to hold it together in a session. Zamarripa could tell he was in distress and wanted to let his emotions out. 

“I told him, ‘You don’t have to be strong right now. What would happen if you were to let it go?’ As soon as I said that, the client started crying for a good minute,” Zamarripa says. “At the end he said, ‘No one has ever told me I didn’t need to be strong at the moment. And I felt so free letting go of all of that.’”

Reporting for this story was supported by the California Health Care Foundation and the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. Sign up for the MindSite News Daily newsletter here.

The post California Program Trains Undocumented Residents to Become Therapists and Serve Those in the Shadows appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The Senate Appropriations Committee did not call Senate Bill 662 for a vote before a procedural deadline last Friday, effectively killing it. Introduced by Sen. Susan Rubio, Democrat of Baldwin Park, the bill would have lifted the state’s ban on electronic recording in civil family, juvenile justice and dependency cases, making it an option when court reporters were unavailable.

The judiciary is statutorily required to provide reporters in felony criminal, juvenile justice and dependency cases. But Rubio hoped her bill would address the long-standing shortage in family courts, where officials have struggled to find enough staff to cover proceedings, despite recruitment efforts and bonus pay. In addition to expanding electronic recording, the bill would have changed California’s stringent certification requirements that limit the applicant pool.

“This is an important issue for me as a survivor of domestic violence, as an advocate for victims and as an advocate of working families,” Rubio wrote in an email, adding that she would continue to talk with unions and professional associations. 

“My goal is that by working side by side we can address the workforce shortages,” she wrote, “while at the same time ensuring victims navigating our court system do not become another statistic.”

For four decades, unions have opposed most attempts by the Legislature to expand the use of recording technology, and this time was no different.

In a Jan. 4 letter to Rubio, the Court Reporters Board of California, which oversees licensing, wrote that “real time reporters were the most dependable,” and that “offering an inferior record to litigants is unacceptable, and measures must be taken to ensure a verbatim record produced by a neutral professional for all litigants.”

In 2021, the Legislature authorized an annual grant of $30 million to increase the number of certified reporters in family and civil cases. Yet the number of professionals retiring or resigning continues to outpace new hires, according to a Judicial Council of California report.

Despite offering incentives, including a $30,000 signing bonus, the San Francisco County Superior Court as of this month had 15 vacancies and was unable to hire any court reporters last year, said Court Executive Officer Brandon Riley.

David W. Slayton, executive director of the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest trial court in the nation, said this week that the incentives won’t “make a dent in our 100 plus court reporter vacancy rate.” Since last February his jurisdiction has seen a net loss of seven court reporters, he said.

“The well documented court reporter shortage in California, coupled with statutory restrictions on electronic recording, amounts to an undeniable constitutional crisis, with over 330,000 hearings taking place in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County in 2023 alone with no verbatim record of what transpired,” Slayton wrote in an email. “This leaves vulnerable litigants in family law, probate and unlimited civil cases, many of whom are self-represented, without a clear understanding of what happened in their proceedings and no ability to meaningfully appeal.”

Anne-Christine Massullo, San Francisco Superior Court’s presiding judge, endorsed SB 662. In a statement the day before its scheduled hearing, she emphasized economic fairness.

“It is essential to find a remedy to close this chasm of injustice that fails litigants who cannot afford to hire their own CSR,” she wrote, referring to certified shorthand reporters, “while favoring others with the financial means to pay a court reporter to take a verbatim record of their day in court.”

Rubio’s bill was co-sponsored by the Family Violence Appellate Project and the Legal Aid Association of California.

The post Electronic Recording in Family Courts Fails to Advance in California Legislature appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

On Oct. 13, Maya, 16, and Sebastian Laing, 12, and their allies celebrated the passage of Senate Bill 331, aka Piqui’s Law, which prohibits California family court judges from forcing kids into so-called reunification camps and ensures that judges and those serving as expert witnesses undergo critical training on domestic violence and child custody.

The siblings had been embroiled in a custody dispute last year when they alleged that their mother was abusing them. Judge Rebecca Connelly, who oversaw their custody case, didn’t believe the siblings’ claims, so in October 2022, she ordered them into a reunification therapy program in Los Angeles. The program is part of a lucrative, unregulated industry designed to make kids recant allegations of parental abuse while yielding operators from $14,000 to $40,000 for four days of training.

Several children who have attended have said the experience left them traumatized.

Maya and Sebastian did not cooperate when transport agents arrived at their grandmother’s home to take them away on Oct. 20, 2022, so they were physically picked up and forced into a car, which Maya said caused her to suffer cuts and abrasions. They were then taken to Los Angeles to spend four days in the program, according to videos that the siblings posted in May after running away from their mother’s home and going into hiding.

Since July, Maya and Sebastian have been allowed to live with their father, but Connelly still maintains that their allegations of abuse describe events that never happened, according to a short documentary by Insider News released last week.

Meanwhile, family court judges are still ordering children into reunification camps across the U.S. and Canada. However, several states are considering legislation similar to Piqui’s Law to comply with a provision in the federal Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022. The act promises states up to $25 million in grants if their reforms comply with national requirements.

The post Children Violently Removed by Court Order Celebrate New California Bill Prohibiting Practice appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

After the 2018 Camp Fire tore through Paradise and neighboring areas, claiming at least 85 lives and displacing 50,000 people, some older residents from that region relocated to Carson City, Nev., and nearby locations.

Months later, Dr. Elizabeth Haase, medical director of psychiatry at Carson Tahoe Hospital and Behavioral Health Services and a founding member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance — a group of mental health professionals raising awareness of the effects of climate change on mental health — said she observed worsening health, including exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and rapid progression of dementia in some of the older people who had relocated from the Camp Fire zone.

“People can have a very dramatic decrease in their overall mental and physical health that’s connected to one of these climate events — that is likely to get missed, in terms of the association,” Haase said. One of her older patients developed pneumonia in addition to worsening of her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and was hospitalized for several months, she said. Her patient’s mental health also deteriorated.

“In offering her the understanding — because I’m somebody that knows about climate and health — that what was happening to her now is linked to her experience in the fire was actually quite therapeutic for her,” she said. “And you know, a lot of sort of depressive and grief-related symptoms came out. And we were able to talk a little bit about what it means to be in your 70s and lose your home with absolutely no possibility, financially, of rebuilding.”

Like Haase, mental health experts based in the San Francisco Bay Area are exploring the ensuing physical, mental and emotional effects of climate change. Dr. Robin Cooper is co-founder and president of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, and an associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She also has a small private practice in the city.

Cooper spoke with the San Francisco Public Press about what needs to be done locally to address climate change’s mental health toll. The following excerpts from the interview have been edited for length and clarity.

You’ve been working as a psychiatrist for decades, and in recent years, you’ve been exploring the threats of climate change to mental health. What got you interested in this field?

I have always been, outside of my professional endeavors, an activist. At the time that I began to learn about and think about and be introduced to the issues of climate change, it had that — “Wake up! Oh my God, this is a potential existential threat.” Once knowing about something that profound, I can’t turn myself away from it. And I began to be active in a number of organizations that were addressing climate change in its broader sense. But as I began to discover, I could use my voice most effectively in the realm that’s close to my work. So, I began to be involved much more in the health impacts of climate change.

A lot was being said about the general broad range of health impacts, but at the end of a talk, a pulmonologist or cardiologist or infectious disease person would say, “Oh, by the way, there’s some mental health impacts.” And I was shocked. I said, “Oh my God, we should be talking about that. We need to be the experts on that.” I met other likeminded psychiatrists, but our voice was very, very tiny at that time. And we came together with the idea that this was something we needed to take ownership of, know more about and be able to speak to it.

Could you describe how climate change affects the mental health of older adults?

So, you and I are both Californians, we know about the Paradise fire. Paradise was a community that had a large number of retirees. It was affordable. It was a place where people could go after years of living in other communities, buy a home that was going to be their place of retirement and live up the rest of their lives. The massive loss of their homes, their community, the place that they could live. These are people who retired, they’re on fixed incomes, who lost everything. So, when you lose your home, and you don’t have a lot of economic resources for rebuilding, you really have secondary emotional impacts. And so, where do you live? The loss of your social support — the greater level of poverty that you live out the rest of your life — interferes with the ability to make choices. And that has huge emotional impacts with depression, post-traumatic stress and a greater vulnerability.

If we look at the disasters that happened in Puerto Rico [in 2017 following Hurricanes Irma and Maria], particularly, the elderly were left on their own. They had no access to medications. Young people had gone to the U.S. mainland for jobs. So, the elderly were left on their own with little to help them recover. And those have huge implications for their emotional wellbeing and their physical wellbeing.

As extreme weather events continue to increase, what should local governments, hospitals, nonprofits and other organizations that are providing services to older people be doing now to strengthen the mental health infrastructure?

We’re in a big crisis, as you know, in health care delivery. We need to make changes in our health care delivery as we confront the vast kinds of troubles that people are going to experience from climate change. And that means shifting to funding and providing care in a more public health, community health manner using population-based ways of intervening. It means that the governmental agencies and those who pay for health care have to do that in a different way.

It also means empowering people in communities to do that before there are extreme heat waves and disasters. It means tightening up our neighbor-to-neighbor relationships, particularly for the elderly. That’s incredibly important, because they can be isolated, left alone, not able to care for themselves. If we have a public health model, and a model based on connectivity in communities, we can have partnerships. We can have buddy systems so Joe knows that Mrs. Smith, who is 86 years old and in her home, is alone and knows what she needs, and has someone to bring her to cooling centers, or help modulate continuing her medications as these disasters and climate events emerge.

Let me just give you another little example. Hurricane Sandy hit New York and the Eastern seaboard with ferocious impacts. Elderly people in this particular public housing that I’m aware of were stuck in their apartments for days without food, light or ability to get out because of the elevators not working. And then people came to the door. And they didn’t know if they were safe. They didn’t know if those were intruders who were going to hurt them, or people there to help them. It doesn’t have to be that way if we take care of some of these things before.

UCSF launched a climate change and mental health task force in June 2019. What did the group set out to do and what has it accomplished, especially for older people?

I would say our achievements have been in the realm of educating mental health trainees about the impacts of climate change in mental health. I believe that medical students need to be what we call climate literate in their educational endeavors. How can we train doctors, and anyone in health care, adequately, if we don’t train them to think about the most significant threat to our wellbeing of this century?

That task force is now being integrated more into this campuswide center on climate health and equity, which actually is a UC-wide endeavor that the Office of the President has supported that is multi-campus, although it’s primarily based at UCSF. I will say it is profoundly underfinanced.

Are you aware of other projects like that in the Bay Area?

There are things happening at many institutions, not with creating a task force, but other kinds of things. Stanford has a new faculty position for one person in the Department of Psychiatry to embed climate change and mental health into their department. Davis has a number of people who are exploring and doing research. But I will say to you, all of these things are siloed. Coming together is a really big issue in the realm of climate and mental health.

The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, last month sounded the alarm about the loneliness epidemic in the U.S., and how social isolation has a detrimental effect on the health of older people. And climate disasters could worsen this disconnection, especially if older adults are displaced from their homes and communities. So, on a local level, what steps can be taken to alleviate the loneliness crisis?

I think it is enhancing recreational, social meal programs that bring people outside of their homes and engage them with each other in socially involved activities. We know that caregivers are so underpaid, and that there’s been a massive loss in numbers of people who are doing caregiving for the elderly, because you can’t make a living off of it. We have to fund caregivers, so that those who are isolated in their homes have regular connection.

Given all the challenges and complexities of investigating and implementing solutions to address climate change’s toll on mental health, what gives you hope for the future?

Hope is a funny word. Hope is not optimism. Hope is not like, “I can see our way out of this.” We are going to have very, very significant, enduring, unrepairable damage from the impact of climate change. What gives me hope is this new way of defining hope — radical hope. I can envision a better world to live in. And when I see what’s happening, I can’t turn away from it, I have to lean into it. And some people are saying now, hope is a verb we create out of the activism that we do to confront our wicked problem. And what we do now is not going to make this all nice and better, but it will affect the kind of world that we’re moving toward in the future.

This Q&A, part of a series of stories on the health impacts of climate change on older adults, was produced with the support of a journalism fellowship from the Gerontological Society of America, the Journalists Network on Generations and the Archstone Foundation.

See also:

• “Research on Climate Change and Health Reveals Risks for Older Adults: A Q&A With Dr. Andrew Chang,” 1/27/2023
• “Battling Despair Over a New Climate Change Reality,” 9/14/2021

The post Climate Change Can Harm Mental Health of Older Adults: Q&A With Dr. Robin Cooper appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

It has been seven months since Maya Laing and her brother Sebastian, who were 15 and 11 at the time, were violently taken from their grandmother’s Santa Cruz home by court order.

Judge Rebecca Connelly, who oversaw their custody case, rejected the siblings’ claims that their mother abused them, and last October she ordered them into reunification training to repair their fractured relationship with their mother.

A friend of Maya’s recorded and posted to social media a video of the siblings resisting while transport agents from Assisted Intervention physically overpowered them in October. That was the last time Maya and Sebastian’s father, his family and the children’s friends had any knowledge of their condition — until now.

On May 29, the siblings posted a series of videos to social media announcing that they had “escaped” their mother’s custody and describing what they endured during their transport and their four-day reunification training.

They said they were taken to an Airbnb where their mother awaited them along with reunification trainers Regina Marshall and Lynn Steinberg. They said they were placed in a room where doorknobs had been removed and where a mattress was pushed against the doorway to keep the door shut. They were guarded by the same transport agents who had overpowered them in Santa Cruz. At one point, the siblings said, one of the agents slept in a bed next to the one they shared. When they were caught exchanging whispered words of comfort, they were banned from speaking to each other.

They said that Steinberg told them that she would “break” them.

“They called us liars and psychopath,” Maya said in one video.

“They, like, threatened to send us to a camp, like a wilderness camp, where if we wouldn’t comply, we wouldn’t be given food or blankets,” Sebastian said.

In response to a written request for comment, Maya wrote that she and her brother viewed their transporters as “kidnappers that we were forced to placate.”

Maya also refuted an allegation by Steinberg that her father was involved in gathering the crowd that arrived to witness their removal from their grandmother’s home. “Our dad in no way orchestrated our protest to being taken. We did what was the only reasonable response to three aggressive strangers, backed up by police officers, coming after us and trying to drag us into a strange car in the middle of the night.”

Maya and Sebastian’s mother, Jessica Laing, responded to a request for comment by emailing a link to a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children webpage featuring two missing child posters of Maya and Sebastian.

Steinberg and Assisted Intervention did not respond to a recent request for comment for this article. In response to a request sent in January, Assisted Intervention sent a brief email stating, “Circumstances like this one are complex.”  

In the meantime, local supporters who spoke out at public events and on social media in reaction to Maya and Sebastian’s removal have gained ground. One month after Maya and Sebastian were taken, Santa Cruz lawmakers held a press conference outside their grandmother’s home to announce local legislation that would ban transport agents from getting physical with children. And as Viji Sundaram recently reported for the Public Press, Senate Bill 331, also called Piqui’s Law: Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence, was unanimously endorsed by California’s Senate Judiciary Committee last month. If the bill is approved by both houses of the Legislature and signed by the governor, it would establish judicial reporting requirements on reunification training and on expert testimony in child custody proceedings.

Several states are considering similar bills to comply with a provision in the federal Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022. The act promises states up to $25 million in grants if their reforms comply with national requirements.

If you or anyone you know is suffering from domestic abuse, help is available. The National Domestic Violence Hotline provides confidential assistance to anyone affected by domestic violence through a live chat and a free 24-hour hotline at 800-799-7233. The California Partnership to End Domestic Violence offers an online tool for finding local organizations and community resources by region.

The post Children Violently Removed by Court Order Resurface and Report Traumatic Experience appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Introduced by state Sen. Susan Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, the bill — Piqui’s Law: Keeping Children Safe from Family Violence — “gives voice to the 920 children that are calling out to us from their graves,” the lawmaker said in introductory remarks before the committee. One way the state could do that, she said, would be to better train court staff and judges.

The bill is named after Piqui, a 5-year-old boy murdered by his father, who suffocated his son while he was sleeping in his car seat in 2017 during an unsupervised visit.

Piqui’s mother, Ana Estevez, gave tearful testimony, saying her son would not have died had the judge approved her request for sole custody and issued a restraining order against her abusive ex-husband.

Piqui’s Law would direct the Judicial Council of California — the policy-making body of the California courts responsible for ensuring the impartial administration of justice — to expand training for judges on domestic violence and child abuse as part of continuing education requirements.

If approved by both houses of the Legislature and signed by the governor, Senate Bill 331 would establish judicial reporting requirements on these trainings and expert testimony in child custody proceedings.

“One thing is clear,” Rubio said. “We need to educate” the judiciary on domestic violence issues.

Another controversial provision in the bill would prohibit courts from ordering family reunification therapy for children of estranged parents. Judges sometimes forcibly send children to camps that often last no more than four days and cost $25,000 to $40,000, to persuade them to bond with the parent they say abused them. Frequently, the children are taken to other states, where they are prevented from having contact with the other parent. Afterward, court ordered separation could last for months or years.

Through tears, with her mother, Jill Montes, by her side, 10-year-old Zoe Winenger testified at the April 25 committee hearing that she was traumatized at a reunification camp. On her way home after the hearing, she told her mother that testifying was the best thing she had done in her life, according to Rubio’s office.

Some at the hearing defended reunification therapy. One father said that without the judge in his case ordering it, he would not have gotten custody of his daughter. “Reunification therapy does in fact work,” he said.

In a press release after the hearing, Rubio said: “Protecting our children should always be a priority, but the legal system failed Piqui and so many other children. SB 331 will begin a systematic change in family court to prevent another family from suffering such pain.”

This is the second time the senator has introduced such a bill. Last year, pushback from the Judicial Council, which objected to the provision that mandated additional training for family court judges, forced Rubio to withdraw her bill. SB 331 is an amended version of that bill.

Several states are considering similar bills to comply with a provision in the federal Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2022. The act promises states up to $25 million in grants if their reforms comply with national requirements.

The post State Bill to Keep Children Safe in Custody Battles Passes First Hurdle appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

State Sen. Susan Rubio is planning to introduce a bill that would allow California’s 58 trial courts to digitally record civil and family law cases, a controversial effort to address statewide courtroom staffing shortages that deprive low-income litigants of official court transcripts.

The move comes two weeks after Los Angeles County Superior Court announced a slew of unprecedented financial incentives to recruit and retain court reporters.

Court reporters provide verbatim documentation of proceedings that are critical to filing appeals, reviewing judges’ behavior and reading back proceedings to jurors.

If approved, the legislation would sidestep the issue of recruiting and training more staff, which has proven a financial and logistical challenge statewide.

“This is very positive,” said Jennafer Wagner, director of programs at the Family Violence Appellate Project, which is sponsoring the bill. The nonprofit provides pro bono assistance to domestic violence survivors and their children appealing trial court decisions in California and Washington.

California law requires courts to provide court reporters in criminal felony and juvenile matters, but not in civil courts, which include family law, probate cases or matters assigned to the writs and receiver departments.

In early February, the Los Angeles County Superior Court announced that it would use nearly $10 million — its portion of $30 million the state had given to all 58 of its courts for fiscal year 2023 to provide financial incentives to “hire, retain and reward” court reporters. The court has 100 vacancies. San Francisco’s share of the state funding is $703,092.

For more than a decade, California has been experiencing an acute shortage of court reporters that has forced nearly all its courts, including San Francisco Superior Court and Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest trial court in the nation, to hustle to fill vacant slots.

The shortage is severe and longstanding; trial courts have been eliminating court reporters in family and civil law cases as a cost-saving measure since as far back as 2012. In November, Los Angeles County Superior Court announced that it would not provide court reporters for family court hearings, despite a 2018 state Supreme Court ruling, Jameson v. Desta, that requires they be provided to poor litigants who have fee waivers. Typically, litigants must pay for court transcripts for civil hearings and trials. If an official court reporter is not available, litigants who can afford to do so may hire their own certified shorthand reporter.

The state Legislature tried unsuccessfully twice in the last decade to introduce electronic recording in courts, which faced opposition from the union that represents court reporters.

“We’re going to push back at any attempts” to switch to electronic recording, David Green, president of SEIU 721, which represents some 2,000 court reporters in Southern California, said in an interview last month when asked if the union continued to oppose California courts going digital. The move, he said, “puts people at risk,” because transcriptions generated from digital recordings are not as good as those produced by a court reporter. Green did not respond to calls seeking comment on Rubio’s bill.

Rubio’s office said the Los Angeles-area Democrat has been trying to work with the union, and that transitioning to electronic recording would not take jobs away from court reporters, but would make their jobs “better.”

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