River Valley Counseling Center Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic - River Valley Counseling Center aims to establish a Certified Community Behavioral Health Center to expand coordinated, comprehensive care in Holyoke & Chicopee, located in Hampden County, MA. These services focus on adults & families with serious mental illness, (SMI), substance use disorders, (SUDs) physical health concerns, (PHC), & cooccurring disorders. (COD) & will target vulnerable subpopulations including Black, Latino(a)s, & veterans.
The creation of a Certified Community Behavioral Health Center (CCBHC) will expand services and provide a more comprehensive approach that will better meet the needs of our community. More specifically, the goals of the CCBHC are: 1. to increase RVCC’s staff capacity to provide mental health, physical health, and addiction recovery support to all enrolled participants; 2. to increase access to and improve the quality of care for behavioral and substance use disorder treatment by delivering a comprehensive recovery-oriented care model; and 3. to improve the physical well-being of individuals with serious and persistent mental illness to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and preventable Emergency Department visits.
In order to provide services and accomplish these goals RVCC will establish an Integrated Health Care Team (IHCT) at both sites that will: (1) expand staffing and service capacity to offer and provide client-centered, coordinated behavioral health care (2) integrate physical health and wellness services within the clinical setting, and (3) expand MAT services at each clinic site. Both IHCTs will include two Licensed Mental Health Clinicians, two SUD Clinicians, a Licensed Clinical Supervisor, three Case Managers, a Recovery/Peer Coach, a Registered Nurse (RN) and a Medical Assistant. A full-time Psychiatric Advance Practice Nurse (APRN) will provide medical psychiatric services with both teams and all CCBHC clients. The project will be overseen by a Project Director who will work closely with an evaluation team and the Medical Director. RVCC proposes to serve 267 unduplicated individuals in year one and another 400 unduplicated individuals in year two, for a total of 667 unduplicated individuals over the entire project.
These two IHCT teams will work to further expand services that will help to engage individuals with high risk of SMI/SED/DD and SUD. The following evidence-based treatments will be implemented: Motivational Interviewing (IM) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Trauma-focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TCBT), Integrated Treatment for Co-occurring Disorders, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT), Neurofeedback (NF) and The 5 A’s for Smoking Cessation.