Santa Clara County funds suicide prevention despite budget cuts

Santa Clara County leaders are walking back a portion of proposed budget cuts to keep a pioneering suicide prevention program that’s contributed to one of the lowest death rates in all of California.

At a Monday budget hearing, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to save two positions from being cut from the county program that operates suicide and crisis hotlines, trains community members to identify and help people in crisis, shapes policy and works with schools on prevention. The program, created in 2010, has been credited for helping bring Santa Clara County death by suicide rates to one of the lowest in the state, at 7.5 deaths per 100,000 people.

The two reinstated positions, a program manager and community outreach specialist, will transfer back from the Behavioral Health Department into the county Public Health Department. Two other positions in the program will be cut. Officials are set to finalize the revised budget proposal Thursday.

County Executive James Williams said the cuts stem from Sacramento withholding funding from counties for local suicide prevention efforts and reallocating the money toward statewide initiatives.

He added the suicide prevention team is one of the only programs seeing an increase in allocated funds as a $787 million shortfall rips into the region’s primary provider of social safety net services.

“The state has decided it’s more effective to implement suicide prevention on a statewide basis through the California Department of Public Health,” Williams said at the meeting. “As I’ve said before, and we’ll reiterate it now: For a county like ours, we don’t agree with that philosophical approach and we have formally asked the state to pass that funding back to us.”

County leaders originally asked supervisors to approve cutting four positions from the suicide prevention team, which roused uproar among experts and community leaders who heralded the county program as a lifesaving service. Williams said the two jobs being cut are data-focused and analytical positions, and that revised proposals for the suicide prevention team’s budget should ensure minimal disruption to its existing work.

Board President Otto Lee called the proposal a matter of “life and death.”

“A lot of things we deal with is in dollars and cents, but if the reduction in service is relating to suicide prevention, that is probably going to lead to more deaths,” he said at the meeting.

Vic Ojakian, an outspoken suicide prevention advocate and former Palo Alto councilmember, said the changes are a good start. Ojakian opposed the cuts amid outrage that the program’s work could be hamstrung or even undone. He has touted the program as an innovative model whose reporting and intervention work has been copied statewide and nationally.

The program is also the reason every city in Santa Clara County has a suicide prevention policy on the books as of 2023.

Ojakian said he’s skeptical that the state’s realignment of suicide prevention work will maintain Santa Clara County program’s momentum of progress.

“I’ve asked the people in the California Office of Suicide Prevention what they’re doing about older adults and they gave me a blank stare,” Ojakian said at the meeting. “I’m concerned because the (county) public health department has done very little to prepare for the transition … Are people safer in this county by doing what’s being proposed? No, they’re not. They’re more at risk and we need to not let that happen.”

Contact Brandon Pho at [email protected] or @brandonphooo on X.