Sonoma State University's decision to close down a free counseling clinic has stirred concern among mental-health service providers and advocates and anger among current and former graduate counseling students.
"It really would be a hardship for the teens we see," said Michael Spielman, executive director of the Drug Abuse Alternatives Center in Santa Rosa, which sends youth from the Rohnert Park and Cotati area to the clinic.
"I am outraged and saddened," said Amber Era-McGarvey, who interned at the clinic last year and now works as a registered therapist intern at emergency family shelters and with battered women.
SSU officials cite inadeqate supervision for graduate student intern counselors, a lack of resources to remedy that situation, and liability concerns as factors in their decision to shut down the Community Counseling Clinic.
Their concerns, they say, center on the fact that the clinic's coordinator - emeritus counseling professor Mark Doolittle - is unpaid but running it in SSU's name, creating a potential liability should something go wrong involving a client.
"It was coming from risk management, basically," said Andrew Rogerson, the SSU provost.
But Elaine Leeder, dean of the school of social sciences, said the issues are not new at the clinic - which has an annual budget of about $20,000 and is funded by student fees.
"I've been dean for 10 years and I've been watching for 10 years and I've been continually concerned," she said. "We really want to maintain and be sure that we provide consistently professional services with appropriate oversight and we can't really ensure that that's going on right now."
Asked why she didn't act to close the clinic earlier, she said, "Things emerge over time."
Clinic advocates call the move senseless, saying it has been run incident-free since opening in 1993.
"The allegations are simply unfounded," said Era-Mcgarvey.
"I'm getting the best supervision available - one-on-one supervision," said John Schneider, a graduate intern who counsels eight clients at the clinic.
Its defenders say losing the county's only free counseling clinic will hurt people who need help but can't otherwise afford it.
"This is a program that serves the neediest people in the community," said County Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who graduated from SSU's counseling program but did not work in the clinic. "I'm really disappointed in the university's decision."
The decision "shows some "really misplaced priorites," she said.
Doolittle, a psychologist and the clinic's founder, still teaches law and ethics at SSU. He volunteers his time at the clinic and is on site Monday through Friday, he said.
He and Rogerson met Friday to discuss the situation, and both said they hope to arrive at a plan to move forward, though that doesn't seem to include leaving the clinic open.
"It's still an unhappy situation," Doolittle said. "But the provost and I have our heads together."
This year nine graduate counseling students, who are paid minimum wage, work under his supervision. They provide therapy for 300 to 400 people a year, Doolittle said, about a third of whom are SSU students. The remainder are referred by other social service agencies, including the county's mental health department.
University officials say they are not questioning Doolittle's qualifications or the quality of his work.
"There was no one questioned his integrity and the way that the interns are being handled at the moment in terms of their training," said Rogerson.
The process that led to the decision was spurred when the California State University ordered its 23 campuses to evaluate internship programs for "future risk," Rogerson said.
"Mark is retired and volunteering and it seems that's not quite tight enough if something were to arise," Rogerson said. "And, of course there is not a dollar we could put toward this right now."
Doolittle, though, said he doesn't know why the matter has become important now and that it would cost nothing more to run the clinic as it has been.
"I've never been paid to be on the clinic, ever," he said. "Everything is just the same. If there were concerns about this, they've never been raised before.
"Trying to eliminate something that is basically free to the university seems inherently wrong."
You can reach Staff Writer Jeremy Hay at 521-5212 or jeremy.hay@pressdemocrat.com.
UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy: