I was somewhat surprised last night, walking into the county’s public meeting on the failure of its mental health provider Cascadia, to see the meeting was being facilitated by Judith Mowry from the city’s Office of Neighborhood Involvement.
Mowry, who was featured on the front cover of the New York Times yesterday for asking black people how it feeeeels to have the city gentrify urban renew Northeast Portland, specializes in getting people to air their feelings on, shall we say, contentious issues. She was also involved in “facilitating” the Chinese Dragon fuck-up, the Cesar Chavez debacle, and more recently in facilitating the site of a delayed center for day laborers. Essentially, it seems to me, Mowry has built a reputation as the person Portland government brings in after everything’s fucked up, and you want someone to pretend to listen while the disgruntled citizens blow off steam. She’s someone governments pay to listen, so that they don’t actually have to. To be fair, she does a good job, filling the role, but “facilitators” like this are a symptom of diseased government.

90 people showed up to the meeting. Most worked for Cascadia, and about 20 were people with mental illness who use Cascadia’s services. Mowry had people break up into small groups, (which make it impossible for journalists to capture the bulk of the conversation…) each with a facilitator (to subdue any really pissed off people before the journalists can get to them…), and asked that “consumers” and “Cascadia people” sit separately, “since the aim of tonight’s meeting is to get feedback from mental health consumers about Cascadia.”
As you’d expect, most consumers were pretty pissed off. Since the county moved last year from paying for services per capita to paying for each individual service in what’s known as a “fee for service” model, consumers have lost all the care that can’t be billed directly to medicaid. The touchy-feely stuff, if you will. Last night was, perhaps, merely overdue and badly performed group therapy…

“We used to have time together,” said one consumer. “We could see each other and we’d meet once a week to get to know each other. Now you don’t see people. They come for their appointments, then they go home.”

“My concern at this point is that all these things are very feely feely, but this is serious stuff, and I’d think by now that the County would have a plan to show us,” said one mental health expert who declined to be attributed. “One thing that really worries me is that this will end up being like Mayor Potter’s showbusiness…” referring to the mayor’s Vision project, which spent $1.2million on listening to Portlanders, but produced a report most people concede could have been crafted on the back of a napkin at the Virginia for a fraction of the cost.

“When the county says people who need services are getting them, my question is, how do we know that people are getting services?” asked State Senator Avel Gordly. “I’m interested in factual, verifiable information that demonstrates how we know that.”

County Chair Ted Wheeler came to the meeting an hour and a half late, but didn’t engage with the audience. Last week, Wheeler met with consumers for two hours at his office.

“I haven’t heard a reasonable rationale for terminating thousands and thousands of clinical relationships,” said Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “These relationships have value that far outweighs the value of the county’s budget. This is clearly not a priority issue for Ted Wheeler.”

The County’s director of human services Joanne Fuller said the county’s plan for what to do with Cascadia is expected “in a couple of weeks.” But she added that it’s going to be an “incremental, transitional process, so people shouldn’t expect a guiding document. As the situation changes, we’ll adapt as we go.”