Rhode Island Healthy Transitions - Abstract “Healthy Transitions RI” will address the needs of 555 youth and young adults ages 16-25 with Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED), Severe Mental Illness (SMI), First Episode Psychosis, and/or Co-Occurring Disorders (COD) at two sites in seven Rhode Island communities. Responsibility for these young people is divided between state agencies, schools, service providers, families, and others. This proposal seeks to create new and expand on existing partnerships responsible for their successful care. It proposes an interdepartmental administrative body, the Transition Team, advised by a Statewide Advisory Council composed of young adults, families, advocacy groups, state departments and service providers. Seven communities: Providence, Newport, Jamestown, Middletown, Portsmouth, Tiverton and Little Compton Rhode Island, have committed to working with the behavioral health organizations providing RI HT. These providers, known as “Labs” will work with their communities and expand on existing partnerships with youth and family representatives, local service provider agencies, education, veteran, employment, recreational, faith-based, advocacy organizations, and other community stakeholders to meet the treatment goals of program participants. Each Lab will have a local advisory group that will guide the local development of the project, learning about the needs of their youth and young adults, collaborate to help identify, engage, and screen those at risk for developing SMI and/or COD. The two Labs will provide RI HT, a modification to coordinated specialty care as the primary evidenced based practice. Teams will also use Shared Decision Making, Motivational Interviewing, Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Dialectic Behavior Therapy as a complement to our modified CSC. The two state agencies responsible for mental health: the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals for adults and Department of Children Youth and Families for children, will oversee a transition team that will identify policy areas that need to be modified or created for the improvement of transitioning children into adult services. These changes will be measured in terms of the numbers of service agreements, policy and practice changes made at the state and city level and by the implementation of funding arrangements that can sustain this effort beyond the life of the grant. The proposal’s other objective, the transformation of the service delivery system, will be measured by the total numbers identified through the outreach and engagement services as being at risk for SMI/COD and the total numbers served by RI Healthy Transition services. The program will provide outreach to 2100 individuals and screen 665 individuals over the five years of the grant. Of these, 585 will receive a clinical assessment and, of these, 555 will receive RI HT services over the five-year period.
