Fairfax County lags the rest of the state in enrolling its mentally ill population in Medicaid, and needs to find ways to boost federal and private funding for mental health services, a new report says.
About one-third of the mentally ill adults receiving help within the scope of the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board, the agency that handles mental health and substance abuse services for the area, are enrolled in Medicaid, the government program for the poor and disabled, the report said, compared with 50 percent statewide.
The findings are part of a broad reassessment of the agency’s practices by the Josiah H. Beeman Commission that was released in draft form on Friday. The release opens a three-week public comment period that will be incorporatedinto the final version, which is expected in October.
Among dozens of recommendations, the report also suggested creating a regional foundation that could garner contributions from the county’s “large and diversified business community,” as well as creating a fund dedicated to housing people with mental disabilities.
The findings come as agencies across the state and country are experiencing greater fiscal pressures, worsened by the declining economy, according to Mary Ann Bergeron, executive director of the Virginia Association of Community Services Boards and a member of the commission.
“Every system is going through the same questioning process, the same process of having to figure out where to allocate the resources that are relatively scarce for mental illness and substance abuse disorders,” Bergeron said.
The Virginia General Assembly, in a rare bipartisan push, this year approved a $42 million spending boost for mental health services in Virginia to accompany a larger package of reforms prompted by the April 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, in which a mentally ill student gunman shot and killed 32 students and faculty.
Advocates for the mentally ill say the funding is still not enough to cover the state’s needs.
