March 2010 will see 4,000 mentally disabled clients out of treatment options and nearly 300 public mental-health employees in search of jobs while the government stands to save between $11 million and $14 million as a result.

According to the plan released yesterday the Department of Mental Health officials said the Implementation Plan for the Transition and Closure of the District of Columbia Community Services Agency would result in the end of most managed mental health care and result in a huge saving.

Union officials are of the opinion that the proposed plan will disrupt the care that is provided to mentally ill people and send them to agencies that may not be equipped to handle their needs. Countering the claim officials at the Mental Health Department said more than half of the current 14,000 clients it serves are through private agencies. It added that the report specifies that the facilities and care given to the 3,600 adults and 450 children that were being transferred would be monitored by the city.

According to the proposal city officials plan to hold fairs from March in order to introduce Community Services clients to private providers and by August, they hope to place 2,500 people with 24 corporate and nonprofit clinics. All the private agencies have asked for more money to accommodate the additional patients while nine of the 24 have said they would need more space while some even proposed using government facilities.

The department proposed a payment of $6.5 million over 12 months to the agencies for the increased service with nearly $4 million in fiscal 2009 and the rest the next year. "Based on the information I have, the implementation plan is complete nonsense," said Vanessa Dixon, a representative for the Doctors Council of the District of Columbia. "What they propose to do is take a public system that works extremely well and close it down and give it to private providers who admit that they don't have the capacity to serve clients."

Stephen Fitzgerald, a retired doctor who worked in mental-health care for more than 30 years, said, "If a group of mentally ill people do not get services, there are other places where they can go," he said. "They could end up in jail or hospitalized in general hospitals or at St. Elizabeths, or they could end up homeless on the street."

Dr. Kirk Halliday, Executive Director the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Erie and Ottawa Counties said, “Unfortunately, as funding becomes more streamlined there is less flexibility about who we are able to serve and what programs are able to be maintained.”

Indicating that the timing was wrong Fitzgerald said, "At a time of economic downturn, increased job loss, increasing numbers of uninsured and unemployed, the need for mental-health services is likely to increase."