Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
With generous federal funding, Connecticut's most comprehensive behavioral healthcare provider, Community Health Resources (CHR), is launching a 2-year plan to rebuild services that were dramatically disrupted by the pandemic. Called Restoration, Access, and Community Engagement (RACE), the plan includes a mix of new technologies as well as grassroots engagement strategies to reach at-risk children, families, and adults. Services provided will address a range of behavioral health needs through in-person and telehealth outpatient, intensive outpatient, school-based, and community-based appointments. The population of focus is all individuals, including those with serious mental illness (SMI), serious emotional disturbances (SED), and co-occurring disorders (COD), who reside in Hartford, Tolland, Windham, Middlesex, and New London Counties, where CHR provides outpatient and school-based services. The catchment area is home to 1.58 million adults and 314,000 youth under 18, according to Census data. While most counties are primarily white, cities and towns throughout the catchment area vary dramatically in terms of their racial and ethnic composition and many towns are significantly below state and national averages for income. The region had clearly documented mental health needs before the pandemic, including increasing overdose deaths and suicide rates. Everything became more serious when COVID hit, particularly among school-age children. Goal 1 calls for increasing access to outpatient and school-based treatment to address anxiety, depression, and trauma for underserved children and youth through trauma screening; connecting youth to evidence-based treatments, and measuring progress. Goal 2 calls for expanded engagement efforts for adults together with improved access to immediate and same-day behavioral health services. This will be implemented through hiring a new APRN, funding a triage team and frontline therapists, as well as providing embedded crisis clinicians to work directly with four local Police Departments and hospitals. Goal 3 articulates how CHR will improve access and engagement in services for disadvantaged populations by providing staff-specific training on behavioral health disparities including cultural and linguistic competence, and employing strategies to engage and retain diverse client populations. Objectives include agency-wide trainings to foster inclusion, targeted efforts to improve access in outpatient clinics serving diverse communities and expanded telehealth services. Goal 4 is to develop and provide resources to address the mental health needs of CHR's staff, after a very challenging year. Objectives will include assembling a staff-led committee that will provide direction regarding individual and group trainings to address issues such as burnout, vicarious trauma, and more. In all, CHR expects to provide services to 500 unduplicated individuals in each year of the grant, totaling 1,000 by the end of year two.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
