USD President's Report 1999

polling of adults revea l s a general and deep reservoir of concern about education, higher education and future jobs among the citizenry. Large majorit i es are will i ng to sacrifice if i t means effective outcomes for children. That is why we are seeing the "education "

access, by putting children on the public agenda, and by focusing attention on private commitment and public investment. We sense that increasing numbers agree with our concerns and our goals. We enter the 2Ist century with optimism, not - withstanding our conceded lack of success over the past 20 years. That optimism is driven by a surge of support for our clients and for us . Recent

governor and "education " presidential candidate polemics begin to predominate . It will be our job to make them keep their promises .

HERE TO HELP THE CHILDREN

A few months back, Sharon Kalemkiarian faced what seemed an easy choice : Hire on as a high-paid consultant with a large mental health care provider, replete with corporate credit card and other perks, or finish the work she started four years earlier to reform San Diego County's fractured mental health program for kids, which comes with a cramped office , modest pay and the specter of unemployment within the year. Kalemkiarian , the mother of three elementary school-age children , didn't take long to make up her mind . "I decided to stay with it," she says. " I knew I would. This is what I set out to do , and it ' s right that I see it through." What Kalemkiarian , a 1989 School of Law graduate and former director of the school ' s Child Advocacy Clinic, set out to do four years ago was no less than a herculean task - streamline mental h ea lth services for the county's 13 , 000 children , who encounter a Byzantine maze to see doctors and counselors and often quit out of frustration. Kalemkia rian knew that frustration while she represented exhausted parents and frightened children at the Legal Ai d Society and, after sponsoring a law student's project examining children's services, r ea1ized th at m e ntal health services wer e by far the worst. W ith leadership fr om the San D iego legal community, the San Diego C ounty Board o f Supervisors eventu ally agr eed to reorganize m ental h ealth services for ch ildren , j o ini n g P roj ect Heartb eat at th e San Diego C ounty Ba r Associatio n i n a $7 m illion , five - year p la n to implem en t a streamli ned m e ntal health progr am fo r child ren , as well as trai ni ng a nd referral services for p arents. Kalemkiarian, who directs the p rogr am, has spent much of the last four years convincing bureaucracies such as MediCal, Children Services Bureau , school districts and mental health providers to give up their funds - $20 million annually - and their slice of the mental-health pie . Instead of dealing with the four agencies, a child will now deal with one provider who will coordinate everything from counseling to after-school programs. The provider contract, which Kalemkiarian helped structure , is expected to be awarded in January. "I realize it's very hard for these big bureaucracies to change ," she says. "But they have to, because it's not the child's fault that we have these complicated bureaucracies. It's the child and the family that we are here to help ."

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