(2520) Mental Health

San Benito County Behavioral Health (SBCBH) Mental Health Division (MH) delivers specialty mental health treatment services and programs that are accessible to the County’s population. Services are available primarily in English and Spanish, and are delivered at our outpatient clinic, in the schools, and at Esperanza, our drop-in center. Services are also delivered in the community and individual’s homes to support them to achieve positive outcomes.

• A previous year’s top department concern that had become a longstanding item was the need for a larger facility to house more staff to operate service program expansions. It is now a reality that a larger facility will be built. We are now completing the building construction planning processes, land for construction has been purchased, construction financing secured, and a building manufacturer is under contract. Planned new facility occupancy is estimated to occur on or about March of 2021.
• Behavioral Health implemented a new Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) project, the Mental Health Diversion and Reentry Court that created alternatives to incarceration in exchange for Behavioral Health treatment adherence. The project also integrated a missing element in this county by providing the project resources to assist military veterans who have behavioral health needs and are involved in justice related issues, much the same as what is known in large counties as Veterans Court. This project is now completing its first year of operation and is functioning very well and has produced some compelling client successes.
• Another new MHSA service program expansion now in its first year of implementation is our PATHS project ((Promoting Access, Trust, and Healthy Behaviors in Schools). This is a school campus based service delivery project providing a rotation of a specific team of Case Managers who focus all of their service delivery on every major school campouts in the County. This staffs are cultivating relationships with students and have become an imbedded part of campus activities. They provide mental health first aid if required, supportive interactions, and conflict resolution and if deeper end clinical levels of care are required they can facilitate connections to the Behavioral Health Clinic resources, or other resources.
• Behavioral Health, mental health Case Management staff completed 2 days of intensive training to be Certified Trainers of Mental Health First Aid for Youth. These staff can now provide the training for the community and school staff who are interested in becoming Certified as Mental Health First Aid providers.
• Behavioral Health obtained the Homeless Mentally Ill Outreach and Treatment Program (HMIOT) funding to support individuals with mental illness by providing financial support for shelter they may not have, or be at risk of losing. The Behavioral Health Department has worked collaboratively with Health and Human Services to support more than 50+ individuals with housing assistance.

• The trend of increasing State Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) and the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid (MediCal) requirements and regulations imposed on county behavioral health departments has not eased and remains a top department concern. All County Behavioral Health Departments in our state are experiencing increasing difficulty meeting the new levels of DHCS requirements and oversight. To adequately meet the requirements/standards we must continue to strive for successful recruitment and retention of high performing professional level clinical staff for direct services delivery. As referenced in the prior year, increasing Quality Management staff is also essential to implementing auditing, oversight and staff education activities for department level auditing and training activities for staff.
• Successful recruitment and retention of graduate degree, professionally credentialed staff remains a top department concern. This concern continues to be elevated by the predicament of dealing with several factors. We occupy the distinction of being the closest proximity, Small County, to large and wealthy neighbor counties. In our case those are the counties of the Bay Area. The higher salaries available in our neighbor counties make our county a bedroom community of job commuters but we are not a destination county for graduate degreed, credentialed, professionals seeking employment. We are faced with new standards from the DHCS that demand we meet mandates to maintain increasingly higher standards for service accessibility that involve requirements for minimum staffing rations per client caseload as but only one example of more demanding state oversight requirement’s. The Behavioral Health Department must be allowed the ability to use its fiscal resources to structure the compensation and even other employment incentives to be realistically competitive in staff recruitment and retention efforts.

• It is a SBCBH, MH goal to improve recruitment and retention of professional level treatment provider staff to meet current and future needs for services availability.
• Population growth in the County poses a unique situation regarding future impact to County Behavioral Health Services (Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment Services). The recovery from the economic recession point to continued population growth in San Benito County. Population growth and emerging trends in society portend for more demands for the availability of Behavioral Health services. County Behavioral Health Services are funded to provide a safety net behavioral health care system for individuals with serious mental illness, children and youth with serious emotional disturbances and individuals who have transient mental health service needs sometimes at an acute crisis level. Only through the addition of the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA, Prop-63) are some funds added for serving lower levels of care through activities designed for prevention and early intervention of mental illness during the early stages of onset. The full array of Behavioral Health services from the treatment of serious mental illness to the availability of prevention and intervention for early onset of mental illness are increasing. The County Behavioral Health Department must find ways to continue to increase professional service delivery staff. The primary challenges to fulfilling this goal will be in solving the recruitment difficulties a small county in the proximity of competing large counties and big private Behavioral Health provider’s present. Being permitted to access our departments full purchasing power of our fiscal resources to provide competitive salaries and also being allowed the flexibility to create other attractive non-salary recruitment and retention incentives will be required or we will most certainly fall farther behind in meeting the community’s needs.