Expanded services, supports and telehealth infrastructure to meet the needs of high-acuity populations resulting from the covid-19 pandemic in eastern iowa

Vera french cmhc will expand services to under/uninsured populations, including 1) adults with complex needs and serious mental illness (SMI) or CO-occurring disorders (COD); 2) justice-involved individuals with SMI or COD; and 3) children with serious emotional/behavioral disturbance. Strategies/interventions will utilize evidence-based practices (ebps) including: same-day access, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), pharmacotherapy, peer support services, integrated case management, applied suicide intervention skills training (asist), trauma-focused CBT, integrated mental health/substance use services, eye movement desensitization reprocessing (emdr), parent-child interactional therapy (pcit), and adlerian play therapy. Project goals and strategies include: 1) upgrade EMR technology, increase telehealth capacity, and improve our ability to manage data for more effective behavioral health care; 2) increase access to mental health services through expansion of same day access to mental health evaluations and crisis counseling and expanding therapy and group services to school and community locations including ymca summer camps; 3) become more trauma-informed and culturally and linguistically sensitive in all aspects of our services through establishing a trauma-informed committee, training staff in asist, and engaging a consultant to train staff and help the organization implement cultural/linguistic sensitivity and diversity and inclusion strategies; 4) increase the availability of clinical and recovery support services in our outreach settings to meet complex and comprehensive client needs by expanding case management and peer support services to non-medicaid persons, including justice-involved adults transitioning to the community; and 5) improve our responsiveness to the mental health needs of our staff by enhancing the employee assistance program, adding regular educational events, hosting an annual mental health and wellness event for staff, developing a resource library, and by refurbishing the staff eating area to give employees safe spaces to debrief. Measurable objectives have been identified for each of these strategies and include serving 1,937 unduplicated individuals within the grant period (819 in year 1 & 1,118 in year 2).