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The homeless mentally ill are often the most critically in need of basic services such as housing and medical treatment. But, in what social workers call a cruel twist, they are also the hardest to reach. 

The City Council will likely adopt a recommendation tonight to authorize the city manager to accept grants from the State Department of Mental Health totaling $2.73 million for the next three years to mobilize outreach workers to help Berkeley’s most seriously mentally disabled with housing, medical assessment, medication services and substance abuse treatment. 

The state is providing the funds through the AB 2034 program, which is making $54.9 million available to 25 counties and two cities. Gov. Gray Davis signed the bill last September. 

Social service workers have traditionally had a hard time helping the mentally ill homeless who are often wary of the workers and mistrustful of the institutions they work for. The prevailing wisdom is that the best way to help the mentally ill is through outreach programs in which social workers go to the client and slowly develop trust. 

The nonprofit Berkeley Emergency Food and Housing Project recently, after two and half years, won the trust of a woman who had been chronically homeless for 15 years, said Terri Light,director of Women’s Services  

“Getting people out and working the streets is what’s necessary to help the mentally disabled,” Light said. “But to develop a rapport and trust can be a series of tiny, tiny, tiny steps before they will agree to come in off the streets.” 

Light said outreach workers brought the woman sandwiches and slowly over the course of years were able to develop a relationship with her. The woman now has had medical treatment and a steady place to stay, which will facilitate her getting Social Security benefits. 

Jim Hynes, assistant to the city manager, said the state funds will go to develop outreach programs that will identify 100 of Berkeley’s homeless who are hardest to serve. The program is based on pilot programs in Sacramento, Los Angeles and Stanislaus counties.  

“The results were very, very successful in keeping people out of jail and getting them the services they really need,” Hynes said. 

He said the program will forge a working relationship with existing homeless agencies like the Berkeley Oakland Support Services and the Berkeley Emergency Food and Housing Project to identify and help serve the toughest cases. 

The department of Health and Human Services will hire 10 outreach workers who will spend the majority of their time in the field “engaging the most service resistant in their own environment,” Hynes said. “This is not your traditional clinic-based service.” 

Alex McElree, The Executive Director of the emergency homeless shelter in Oakland, which serves up 50 of Berkeley’s homeless each night during the winter, said there is always a concern when municipalities get money that they will just create another layer of bureaucracy. 

“I think social workers need to get out from behind the desk and get out into the street where they can do the most good,” McElree said. “I’m glad to hear Berkeley’s getting the money. If any city can make it work it’s Berkeley.”