It's been a busy week for us. My mom arrived safely Wednesday afternoon. Nanny Rebecca brought Rebecca to me at work so that she could go with me to pick Grammy up at the airport. Rebecca was so happy to see her Grammy (and vice versa). Grammy and Rebecca have been chums yesterday and today. They've been out to lunch and breakfast, taken trips to the bookstore, done art projects, and generally had a good time.
Ramy started a trial today, so he's been busy thinking of how to defend his case. Hard to believe I'm now 2 months into the internship - the time has FLOWN! I'm 1/6 of the way finished. Must get my stats program so I can analyze my data and get my dissertation defended.
Things are busy and stressful at DBH right now. One of the effects of the current economic condition is that there are now fewer millionaires in California and those who are left have fewer millions. A special millionaire's tax pays for mental health funds. Other funds for my department come from realignment funds, which come from sales and property taxes. Property values in San Bernardino County are one of the two counties in California that have been most impacted by the housing slump, property values have plummeted, and so property tax revenues have tanked. Then of course our budget crisis has caused the governor to retract more state dollars from Medi-Cal, which is our prime reimbursement source. The good news for us is that we have job security. The bad news is that we're going to have an onslaught of new clients. This is because they are cutting out reimbursement for fee-for-service providers, who we have been able to refer people to in the past (for clients who were able to meet share-of-cost). DBH will now be the only provider of mental health services for Medi-Cal clients. What's more, we lose the ability to screen people out for lack of medical necessity. Whereas we used to triage people and send them to fee-for-service providers if they weren't as serious, now they'll have to get full intakes and be referred for services in our clinics. My clinic is really expecting our workloads to increase. For me, it means I'll be doing a lot more intakes and a LOT of crisis interventions and 5150 (involuntary hospitalization) assessments. It won't really affect how many clients I see regularly, except for the fact that I'll probably only be doing very short-term therapy with clients. So it will be interesting, and that I'll get lots more experience that is great, even if a little scary.
I went to the graduation ceremony for the Perinatal clinic today. I was officially at my intern day but was able to slip away for a bit to attend. For the next graduation, I'll go for the whole thing, because I'll have some of my individual clients graduating, and I feel strongly that I should support them. It was a moving experience, because it was such a momentous occasion for those girls. I certainly haven't ever felt such intense pride about any of my graduations, because I haven't had to work so hard to get there. For most of my Perinatal girls, this is the only graduation they've ever had and it's the first thing in their lives they've actually accomplished. The graduation is a **really** big deal, and for the six girls who graduated, there were probably 100 moms, dads, step-parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, baby daddies, probation officers, CPS workers, and random people pulled off the street to whoop and yell as they got their "diplomas."
No pics, because the computer isn't wanting to read my SD card, for some unknown reason. Probably need to reboot or something technical like that. Hopefully will have pics soon.
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