(a) The Legislature finds and declares as follows:

1. (1) The State of California accepts its responsibility to ensure and uphold the right of persons with mental disabilities and an obligation, to be executed by the State Department of State Hospitals and the State Department of Health Care Services, to ensure that mental health laws, regulations and policies on the rights of recipients of mental health services are observed and protected in state hospitals and in licensed health and community care facilities.
2. (2) Persons with mental illness are vulnerable to abuse, neglect, and unreasonable and unlawful deprivations of their rights.
3. (3) Patients’ rights advocacy and investigative services concerning patient abuse and neglect previously provided by the State Department of Mental Health, including the Office of Human Rights and investigator, and state hospitals’ patients’ rights advocates and state hospital investigators and transferred to the State Department of Health Care Services and the State Department of State Hospitals, may have had or have conflicts of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest.
4. (4) The services provided to patients and their families are of such a special and unique nature that they must be contracted out pursuant to paragraph (3) of subdivision (b) of Section 19130 of the Government Code.

(b) Therefore, to avoid the potential for a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest, it is the intent of the Legislature that the patients’ rights advocacy and investigative services described in this article be provided by a single contractor specified in Section 5370.2 that meets both of the following criteria:

1. (1) The contractor can demonstrate the capability to provide statewide advocacy services for persons with mental disabilities.
2. (2) The contractor has no direct or indirect responsibility for providing services to persons with mental disabilities, except advocacy services.