Ventura County Behavioral Health Department

The lemon-yellow duplexes adorned with Doric columns and rose gardens had the look of a freshly built suburban housing tract. That they are in fact communal housing for the mentally ill says something about who built them: developer and business magnate David H. Murdock. Murdock used his own money to build the $4.5-million complex of single-story duplexes on a 2.75-acre parcel near Camarillo owned by Ventura County. On Wednesday, the chief executive of Dole Food Co.

The lemon-yellow duplexes adorned with Doric columns and rose gardens had the look of a freshly built suburban housing tract. That they are in fact communal housing for the mentally ill says something about who built them: developer and business magnate David H. Murdock. Murdock used his own money to build the $4.5-million complex of single-story duplexes on a 2.75-acre parcel near Camarillo owned by Ventura County. On Wednesday, the chief executive of Dole Food Co.

Ventura County is expanding its efforts to find a new director for its troubled mental health department after only 14 candidates applied for the $114,000-a-year post. The county will soon hire a recruiting firm to help widen the pool of candidates, said Human Services Director Barbara Journet. A decision not to use a professional recruiter earlier in the process probably accounts for the weak response, Journet said.

More than a dozen Ventura County mental health workers have received layoff notices, and county administrators warn more job losses are likely due to a worsening budget crunch. Fourteen employees in the Behavioral Health Department were given letters last week informing them that they will lose their jobs next month, said Linda Shulman, the division's acting director.

More than a dozen Ventura County mental health workers have received layoff notices, and county administrators warn more job losses are likely due to a worsening budget crunch. Fourteen employees in the Behavioral Health Department were given letters last week informing them that they will lose their jobs next month, said Linda Shulman, the division's acting director.

Ventura County's Behavioral Health Department will present a progress report Wednesday on how Proposition 36 is working. The law, passed in November 2000, lets certain nonviolent drug offenders receive substance-abuse treatment rather than jail time. Since July, hundreds in the county have received such treatment.

Linda Shulman, acting director of the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department, has been hired for the permanent position. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously in closed session Tuesday to offer her the job. Shulman has been performing the director's duties in the year since supervisors fired former director David Gudeman, citing poor management. Shulman, 41, is a psychologist and earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 1996.

The former director of Ventura County's Behavioral Health Department has been hired as medical director of Simi Valley Hospital's behavioral health unit. David Gudeman, a UCLA-trained psychiatrist and internist, began his current job July 24. He oversees the hospital's 32-bed, acute-care psychiatric unit, which is a locked, inpatient facility for adults. "His ability and expertise will be an asset to the hospital as a whole and to this community," said Margaret R.

As a psychiatric social worker who recently retired from the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department after 17 years of service, it is my impression that Steve Kaplan is being wrongly targeted for punishment following the breakdown of the merger between the Public Social Services Administration and Behavioral Health. Steve researched the options quite carefully and in fact proposed that Behavioral Health become free-standing from the Health Care Agency as a first choice before considering a merger of the two agencies.

Psychologist Michael Wells Lorr of Ventura died Wednesday after a rain-related automobile accident in Moorpark. He was 55. Lorr was born Feb. 29, 1944, in Takoma Park, Md., where he grew up and attended school. He completed undergraduate work at Oberlin University in Ohio and received a doctorate in psychology from the University of Iowa in 1972. In the mid-1980s, he moved to Ventura and was later employed by the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department in Simi Valley.

Ventura County is expanding its efforts to find a new director for its troubled mental health department after only 14 candidates applied for the $114,000-a-year post. The county will soon hire a recruiting firm to help widen the pool of candidates, said Human Services Director Barbara Journet. A decision not to use a professional recruiter earlier in the process probably accounts for the weak response, Journet said.

AIDS Care will host daylong conferences Monday and Tuesday aimed at educating health care professionals about HIV prevention and risk reduction. The event, designed to reach out to people who provide service or care to alcohol and drug users, will offer a variety of workshops, including one dealing with cultural factors in substance abuse and another focusing on issues surrounding needle exchange and bleach distribution programs.

I am the medical director of the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department but I am writing this as a private, tax-paying citizen of the county of Ventura. On April 7, our Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to merge the Behavioral Health Department with the welfare department to form the new Human Services Agency, bringing with it the 43-bed Hillmont Psychiatric Hospital and all the outpatient mental health and alcohol and drug clinics. While on the surface it is presented as a merger, in my opinion it was a move to subordinate mental health to welfare because the head of the new department is the current director of the Public Social Services Agency.