Albany Area Community Service Board CMHC Grant - Aspire Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (Aspire BHDD) is a public, nonprofit community service board providing person-centered mental health (MH), substance use disorder (SUD), developmental disability, and social services to citizens in 8 Southwest Georgia counties. We served over 11,000 individuals in 2019 and 2020 through 29 licensed outpatient and residential programs from 5 Outpatient & 2 Residential locations. Aspire is one of Georgia's 23 Community Service Boards (CSBs) providing safety net behavioral health and developmental disabilities services. Aspire is applying to seek the CMHC grant to support and restore the delivery of clinical services impacted by COVID-19. Southwestern Georgia continues to have an unmet need for severe mental illness (SMI), serious emotional disturbance (SED), and substance use disorder (SUD) services. Aspire provides a complete continuum of care, but current Medicaid reimbursement is insufficient to extend services to as many clients as could benefit. Funding will be used to: Increase outpatient service delivery and increase qualified staffing, while building IT capabilities and infrastructure to control cost, focus on increasing the use of evidence-based and trauma informed practices in our existing MH/SUD/DD services, expand the capacity of CMHC staff to address crisis and emergency response, improve resources to address mental health needs of CMHC staff, and provide diversion services to promote alternatives to hospitalization and incarceration. Diverson services will include a Co-Response Team located in Dougherty County. This county's poverty rate is 22.6%, higher than 148 of the 159 counties in Georgia. Albany, Dougherty County's largest city, ranked 486 in the 500 Cities project for chronic disease risk factors, health outcomes, and clinical prevention services. In Georgia, an individual with serious mental illness has a 1-5 chance of ending up in prison or hospital. We will combine Aspire's person-centered, trauma-informed, and recovery-oriented care services with our partners' strengths to provide expanded access to the full continuum of health services and supports. We will strengthen our health information systems, data collection, and reporting, support greater mobility for community-based staff, and promote interoperability to improve care coordination. Aspire has evolved over 30 years into the organization we are today, with experience in clinical care and program development, including robust policies and procedures around all required operational functions that allow us to continue to meet federal and state requirements while providing high-quality services.
