San Joaquin County needs mental health professionals. A $5.2M program aims to fill the gaps

Like many students working on a masters degree program in behavioral health, Allie De Avellar knew she would be required to work an internship to complete her degree.

Also like many students, she was worried because those hours are typically unpaid — requiring 40 hours of work a week for about three months without additional financial support. Most students end up working side jobs during what little time off they have to get by.

But De Avellar was among the first group of masters students to receive a paid internship, as well as a partial scholarship, through a $5.2 million initiative designed to get more behavioral health professionals working in San Joaquin County.

“I can honestly tell you I am where I am now because those funds were available to me. That’s the truth,” De Avellar said. “Because I was able to be at a paid internship, I was able to focus on that and not worry about outside work. Winning the scholarship allowed me to have breathing room, to leave my other job and switch to a job in my field. I now have the career that I want.”

She works at Victor Community Support Services in Stockton, a nonprofit that offers educational, mental health and other social support services to children and their families.

It’s exactly the kind of role that officials in San Joaquin County hoped students like De Avellar would begin to fill, in order to address the region’s ongoing shortage of mental health professions.

The Central Valley faces acute demand for behavioral health workers.The San Joaquin Valley had the highest percentage of adults who have experienced “serious psychological distress” by region across the state in the past year, according to a report by the California Health Care Foundation. Yet at the same time, San Joaquin County ranked worst in the state for its ratio of licensed psychiatrists and psychologists in the same report.

The need is so great in San Joaquin County that last April officials announced a $5.2 million partnership with the nonprofit HealthForce Partners of Northern San Joaquin Valley and county Behavioral Health Services agency to help bolster the region’s mental health staffing.

The county has about 700 behavioral health workers, and that includes mental health and substance abuse professionals. Yet the county was still about 140 workers short to fill its 840 total mental health positions.

Since the announcement of the partnership, the results of that cash infusion are being felt across the Central Valley as students like De Avellar and existing behavioral health professionals are reaping the benefits of the targeted workforce development initiative.

The partnership has taken a multi-pronged approach to using its $5.2 million in funds, which came as a grant from San Joaquin County’s $148 million share of American Rescue Plan Act federal money approved in 2021.

The county partnership has focused on a range of options, from offering scholarships to students in behavioral health masters programs to providing loan forgiveness to those who have graduated. The initiative has also paid for required student internship hours and handed out retention bonuses to existing workers.

To qualify, students and staff must be a resident of San Joaquin County or work in the county. Christina Gilbert, San Joaquin County director of HealthForce Partners, said the goal is to grow and retain local talent in the field, and help lighten some of the financial burdens of those looking to join the profession.

“The whole idea was to address those pipeline problems. We’re infusing more (people) into those pipelines and increasing the number of students looking for jobs in that system,” Gilbert said.

In its first year of rollout, the initiative — which is slated to go through 2026 — here is how the funds have been distributed:

Scholarships: Turlock’s Stanislaus State has given out 22 $5,000 scholarships, Stockton’s University of the Pacific has given out 10 $10,000 scholarships. Approximately the same numbers are expected this year.

Paid Internships: About 10 in the first year of the program, and about 20 are planned each subsequent year of the grant. This includes funding for a full-time field supervisor to meet university practicum requirements.

Retention Bonuses: About 70 bonuses from $500 to $5,000 annually will be awarded over the course of the grant. Payouts will begin December 2024 for existing behavioral health workers who sign a two- or three-year contract with the county.

Loan Forgiveness: The program has awarded 22 so far, with a goal of 50 total to be awarded to San Joaquin County workers and those at approved partner agencies in the county.

Another round of the need-based scholarships is planned for this year. Both Stanislaus State and University of the Pacific are accepting applications for the fall 2024 semester. To qualify students must be residents of San Joaquin County and complete their intern hours with the county or a partner organization.

Justin Low, an associate professor and lead for the University of the Pacific’s new master of arts in counseling psychology program, said he hopes the scholarships will help lessen the burden on students interested in going into mental health fields. Pacific’s annual tuition for its masters programs is about $34,000 a year, while the scholarships cover $10,000 of that for selected students.

“Finances are always one of the major barriers to pursuing a graduate education. Whenever we have a prospective student, one of the questions is about finances,” he said. “I think that the purpose of this grant is to help move past the finances and get people into the workforce. Hopefully it will make a difference.”

At Stanislaus State, where tuition is closer to $9,000 a year, the $5,000 scholarships go farther and cover more than half the annual enrollment costs. Still each year the university has more than double the number of applicants to its three behavioral health-related majors — psychology, marriage and family therapy and social work — than they are able to accept because of space and resources.

Haley Ye, the dean of the university’s Office of Graduate Studies and Research said she wishes Stanislaus County would launch its own partnership to train and retain more behavioral health workers.

“Demand will continue to grow especially in the Stanislaus County area,” Ye said. “We are hoping to have a similar kind of partnership in this area.”

Gilbert said that anecdotally the partnership’s efforts have helped to move the needle and stem some of San Joaquin County’s behavioral health shortages.

County staff has said that fewer people are leaving, and the revolving door has slowed down. But she said they won’t likely have solid numbers on the program’s progress until the end of this year.

“All initial indications are that it's headed in the right direction,” she said.

For students who have already benefited from its incentives, the results speak for themselves. Among them is Stanislaus State master of social work graduate Melissa Windham.

She received a paid internship from the partnership last summer with San Joaquin County Behavioral Health Services, and has since gone on to work at the department. More than half of the first class of interns have followed suit, and are now part of the county’s behavioral health workforce.

Windham worked as an intern for three months before being hired full-time as a mental health specialist working with adults.

She said it would have been much harder without the paid internship, and she likely would have had to find a night or weekend job. She hopes partnerships like the one between HealthForce and the county encourage more people to work in behavioral health.

“I think that providing those different supports will help bring more people into the field,” she said. “You have all these propositions and bills coming in where they say we need mental health workers and social workers. I think people will look at the field a little bit more now they are receiving some types of help with education and paid internships.”

Marijke Rowland is the senior health equity reporter for the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, a nonprofit newsroom, in collaboration with the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF).

This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: San Joaquin County is in dire need of mental health professionals