County Gets $4.3 Million for Crisis Counseling : Mental health: Officials are filling 100 slots for workers to treat residents with post-quake trauma. Critics call federal grant excessive.

Was Chad Hubbard, the 14-year-old Simi Valley boy killed in a schoolyard stabbing, really a casualty of earthquake-related trauma?

Do as many as 39,000 Ventura County residents, one-third of them children, really need crisis counseling to heal the psychic wounds of the Jan. 17 disaster?

That’s what Ventura County Mental Health Services asserts in a grant proposal that won the county $4.3 million in federal funds over the next nine months.

With verbal assurances that the money is coming from FEMA, mental health officials have already begun filling the 100 social worker slots needed for the program. Tuesday they will ask the county Board of Supervisors to lease a Ventura building for the additional workers.

“The fact of the matter is, people are having problems,” said Randall Feltman, director of Ventura County’s mental health services. “Frankly, unless it’s happening to you, it doesn’t matter. Everybody understands rebuilding your house. Not everyone understands this.”

Indeed, many residents and city officials are baffled by the grant to keep crisis counseling going long after the actual crisis has passed.

“I think it’s excessive,” said Roger Campbell, a Fillmore city councilman who lost his home in the quake. “I think it’s money that could be better used in the community,” rebuilding homes and businesses.

Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said he could excuse some exaggeration on the grant proposal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “When you’re putting together grants, you try to be creative,” he said.

But he was surprised that the federal agency was willing to pay the price.

“I’m a little shocked at $4.3 million,” Stratton said, “especially when what I’ve gotten from people is that FEMA is being extraordinarily stingy in giving people checks for actual damage.”

“I think most of them would rather have the money (than counseling). Give me a check for $10,000, and I’ll go away happy.”

That, mental health experts say, is a short-sighted approach.

“The reality is, a tragedy has hit their lives and shaken them up emotionally,” said Bob Benedetto, director of the county’s earthquake counseling program. “If we don’t get to that, the money isn’t going to do them that much good.”

The pent-up stress eventually erupts in other ways: marital strife, bad behavior by children, health problems, even violence.

The Chad Hubbard stabbing, officials say, is a prime example of a case where existing tensions escalated in the days after the quake.

Chad, an eighth-grader at Valley View Junior High School, was stabbed by a classmate Feb. 1 after an ongoing feud grew violent. Phillip Hernandez was found guilty last week of involuntary manslaughter.

“The campus was in turmoil because of the earthquake,” Feltman said. “The whole campus was agitated.”

Feltman’s department used the schoolyard slaying and the suicide of a Simi Valley businessman, who lost his business to the quake, in a formula FEMA uses to measure the need for mental health funds.

The impact of adding two deaths to the calculations--which included 868 injuries, 559 destroyed homes and 4,700 damaged houses--was minimal.

Far more significant was the county’s assessment of residents needing mental health counseling. Consider the formula used for schoolchildren.

Mental health officials calculated that 90% of all students in Simi Valley, Fillmore and Piru were affected by the quake and that half of all those would need psychological services.

In addition, one quarter of the affected students in Moorpark and Thousand Oaks were expected to need counseling, according to the grant. That totaled 13,026 students.

“That seems really high,” acknowledged Jennifer Elson, who is directing the county’s earthquake counseling for children. “I can tell you that we have not seen 13,000 students.”

Still, Elson said she can use every one of the 12 full-time social worker positions and contract agencies that the grant provides for Ventura’s youth population.

“I think it’s not enough,” Elson said. “This type of a natural disaster, it triggers other issues that (the children) haven’t dealt with.”

One child became obsessed about a heart attack her father had a year ago. Others have brought up child abuse and other aspects of family discord.

“We have not seen one family that was like the Brady Bunch before the earthquake,” Elson said. “This earthquake has really crumbled families.

“I can assure you, the families that call us are in crisis.”

One mother called to say her son was threatening to shoot himself because he couldn’t sleep. Some teen-agers have regressed to sucking their thumbs. Model students have turned into discipline problems in the classroom.

“I got a call from a mother whose kid got kicked out of day care,” Elson said.

Beyond the problems in schools, mental health officials estimate that 1,000 older adults, 8,646 farm laborers and Spanish-speaking residents, 4,600 unemployed workers and as many as 12,000 mentally ill residents could all be in need of crisis counseling.

“To you, it may seem to be exaggerated,” Feltman said. “It may be that we don’t fully appreciate how many people are impaired.”

His grant proposal estimates that 250,000 county residents were somehow affected by the quake and that as many as 39,000 may need counseling.

But the county and private agencies have had a mental health program operating since the day of the quake and have seen about 4,600 people. Only about half of those actually went through counseling.

“This is so long after the fact, I think a lot of the people have gotten over it and moved on,” said Fillmore Councilman Roger Campbell. “The emotional stress that I’m under is for financial reasons.”

But Feltman argued that the investment in mental health has been relatively small, compared to rebuilding efforts.

In the first four months since the quake, FEMA has devoted $2 million in Ventura County and a total of $12.7 million across the region for crisis counseling, a spokesman said.

By contrast, the federal agency has put $773.3 million into temporary housing assistance on a regional basis. In addition, the Small Business Administration has provided $1.4 billion in loans to business owners. Ventura figures were not available. Still, many residents are not getting the help they need fast enough, Campbell said.

He recalled one family now living in a trailer where their house used to sit. A Fillmore businessman, who lost his business to the quake, now risks losing his car and house to the bank.

“That’s the sort of person who shouldn’t fall through the cracks,” Campbell said. The poorest residents, he said, are covered by other social programs. “But the average guys, who go to work nine to 10 hours a day, they’re hurting.”

Campbell, who lost his own home in the earthquake, said the counseling money could be better spent helping people rebuild the community.

Frank Santangelo of Simi Valley agreed with him.

“What they’re talking about is a waste of time and money,” said Santangelo, 66, who lives in the Friendly Village mobile home park. “They should give it to the people to fix up their houses.”

Santangelo considers himself something of an expert. He and and his wife were living in southern Florida when Hurricane Andrew struck. After losing two homes and two restaurants in the devastating storm, they decided to retire in California.

Two days after they bought a mobile home in Simi Valley, the Jan. 17 earthquake shook their new home to the ground.

Santangelo says he doesn’t need counseling. He needs specially designed earthquake braces to secure his trailer.

His wife, Alberta, isn’t so sure. She recalls how she began having problems with high blood pressure and anxiety after the Florida disaster.

“Sometimes I wake up, and I feel that uneasiness, that pressure,” she said. “But I don’t know what someone could tell me that could change that.”

Benedetto said many of the residents who most need counseling are resistant to the idea. Right now, he has teams of social workers spreading out through the affected communities, knocking on doors.

“We don’t want to be intrusive. We don’t want to force anything on anybody,” he said. “A lot of people are just delighted to have us there . . . if you give them a chance to talk about what happened.”

The nine-month grant provides about 100 full-time slots, many of which could be filled with part-time workers. In addition, $1 million of the grant will go for contracts with private agencies already helping with mental health counseling.

About 44 full-time social worker positions will focus on adults, mostly in Fillmore and Simi Valley. Efforts to reach farm workers and Spanish-speaking residents will be supplemented by Catholic Charities and Clinicas del Camino Real Inc., a chain of health clinics.

Another 12 full-time positions would go toward serving schoolchildren. Elson said she intends to station a crisis counselor at every Simi Valley school that requests one. Fillmore has focused efforts on two sites. In addition, the county will contract with two private groups: Child Abuse and Neglect Inc. and Interface Children, Family Services.

The program also pays for crisis counselors at mobile home parks and senior citizen centers. The grant allots 20 full-time positions to serve the elderly.

Edna Day, 77, of Simi Valley, said she does not expect to use the counseling services. Nor has she asked FEMA to repair her trailer in Friendly Village park.

But she is glad to hear about the new grant for earthquake counseling. After all, she said, she is still haunted by the quake that left her pinned in her bed beneath her heavy wooden furniture.

“I’m not at all at ease,” she says. “You go to bed at night and you feel your bed is rocking.

“I think if everybody answers real honestly, none of us is the same.”