(230) Substance Abuse Fund

The San Benito County Behavioral Health Department (SBCBH) Substance Use Disorder Services Division (SUDs) provides a continuum of care encompassing prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery services. Prevention activities include school-based and community-focused programs. The continuum of services available is for all age groups, from youth to senior citizens.

SUD Counselors provide screening, assessments, treatment planning, individual and group counseling, intensive outpatient treatment programs, information, referral, and linkage assistance to other agencies including residential treatment programs, Narcotic Treatment Programs (NTPs)/Opioid Treatment Programs (OTP) and Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) programs.

A specialized Perinatal outpatient treatment component provides focused treatment for the population of pregnant or parenting mothers in need of substance abuse treatment. Transportation and childcare are also provided for eligible clients participating in this program.

The SUDs Services Division provides services for self-referred and mandated clients, referred by the criminal justice system and other oversight entities. These substance abuse treatment services are provided through outpatient clinic-based services and through contract providers who provide residential based treatment services and outpatient Narcotic Treatment and Medication Assisted Treatment Programs. Incarcerated inmates also receive substance abuse treatment services at the adult and juvenile detention facilities. Many clients are also referred through Child Protective Services.

SUD Services is also the lead agency for the County’s Drug Court Program. The Drug Court Program is an alternative treatment option to incarceration for individuals arrested for minor drug offences. Drug Court is a project involving multiple agencies such as Behavioral Health’s SUDs Program, Probation, District Attorney, Public Defender, and the Superior Court.

• This year SBCBH SUDs Services organized its largest drug prevention event of the year, as a Red Ribbon resource festival. There were 15 participating community agencies with informational booths and over 200 people in attendance at the weekend event that occurred at one of our local school campuses.

• SBCBH SUDs Services organized a community engagement event by organizing an art contest involving the majority of schools in our community. The schools assisted by facilitating their children and youth to participate in the art event where artwork with Red Ribbon’s anti –drug abuse themes were produced by the students, judged in collaboration with the Arts Council and displayed at our Red Ribbon Festival in Downtown Hollister.

• SBCBH implemented the ambitious and complex project of opting into the County discretionary State and Federal Drug MediCal Organized Delivery System pilot program (DMC-ODS). The federal waiver DMC-ODS pilot program is intended to test improvements in the methods and delivery of substance abuse treatment through new and expanded services, also eligible for reimbursement through the state and federal MediCal system. The DMC-ODS pilot program is now implemented in our county and through our DMC-ODS Plan, we have expanded services to include a 3.5 level of care and add additional youth and monolingual-Spanish outpatient groups.

• SBCBH SUDs Services’ Drug Court had 12 enrollees in FY 21-22 and 1 graduate that were able to complete tiers and phases throughout the program while experiencing the challenges of an individual in recovery. The department experienced another successful year partnering and collaborating with our law enforcement, probation, and re-entry partners to ensure that we assist clients in becoming successful community members while on a road to recovery.

• SBCBH SA has been challenged to make system level operations and service delivery changes due to the many restrictions and precautions caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic. It is significant to note that throughout he Pandemic duration SA treatment and prevention services have continued with no cessation of service delivery, nor clinic office closure. It is commendable and deserves recognition of the staff as essential workers who have provided our community the safety net of substance abuse treatment and prevention services.

• Due to participation in the Opt-In Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System, SBCBH is experiencing some challenges. We are finding that some of the new required services for DMC-ODS are for services that were not previously provided by SBCBH and that the sustainability and functionality of those services would require a larger client population and staffing capacity that typically exists in a more populous, larger county. However, our neighbors in Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara Counties do house some of the more difficult to find required licensed providers and SBCBH has contracted and collaborated with these non-profits to assist our clients in recovery before ideally bringing them back to our services in San Benito County. We are fortunate to be the only small county within reasonable time and distance range to these large county resources. We are finding some challenges with the required administrative functions of working with non-county operated contractors. For example, as our treatment system expands with non-county operated contract providers, the oversight and auditing responsibilities for contract provider adherence to regulations and appropriate billing for reimbursement increases the need for more Quality Improvement staff. Quality Improvement is a specialty area of behavioral health work and requires a great deal of training and a steep learning curve if staff do not already have this experience/skill set.

• We continue to experience increasing demands from the State Department of Health Care Services and their oversight body, the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid through increased program integrity mandates and auditing requirements related to MediCal services reimbursement claiming. There also new and more stringent accessibility to services requirements. It is required difficult goal to achieve to navigate through the expansion of federal and state mandates and we must acquire the skilled and degreed professional and credentialed staffs that are equipped with the abilities to help us remain in compliance with the requirements. We must also be capable of providing more line staff training to meet the changing and challenging MediCal reimbursement claiming and audit requirements. Substance Abuse Services will increase its exposure to Federal and State oversight activities through increased MediCal reimbursement claiming activity due to participation in the Opt-In Drug Medi-Cal Organized Delivery System (ODS). Among the counties in our state, we are not unique in having almost all our clients engaged with substance abuse treatment as mandated participants. Clients become involved with treatment through either court mandates, or other judicial oversight entities. It is hoped that a future goal can be met to succeed with substance abuse prevention and education efforts to a degree that results in higher numbers of individuals becoming involved with our treatment services by choice.