Addressing behavioral health disparities due to covid-19 by strengthening and supporting the system of care. - achieve behavioral health (achieve) will expand outreach and access to behavioral…

Addressing behavioral health disparities due to covid-19 by strengthening and supporting the system of care. - achieve behavioral health (achieve) will expand outreach and access to behavioral health services (BH) for individuals disproportionately impacted by covid-19 in rockland and orange counties, with a focus on children (>18), women (18+), and the hispanic community. We will accomplish this by enhancing our telehealth infrastructure, increasing staff supervision, training, and support, and implementing a robust outreach and school consultation program. Achieves cmhc project goals are to: 1) enhance our telehealth infrastructure to increase access to BH and specialty care services; 2) increase patient monitoring and assessments to improve quality outcomes; 3) stabilize staff burnout and turnover; 4) increase access to BH services for school-aged children; and 5) increase access to BH services for the hispanic community. We plan to address these goals by establishing eight virtual pods to provide private, flex-space for telehealth or face-to-face services and hiring 1 FTE telehealth/IT coordinator to support and expand achieves telehealth infrastructure. We seek to increase use of telehealth BH services by 12% within 6 months of award and telehealth BH specialty care by 15% with 9 months of award. We will implement a remote patient screening and monitoring tool, completing 30,000 screenings/assessments over the two-year project to reduce suicidality among 45% of clients with positive screen for suicidal ideation upon intake and reduce PHQ-9 score among 40% of clients with positive clinical PHQ-9 depression screen within first 90 days of treatment. Achieve will also create a consultation and guidance center for schools that each year will train and supervise 30 teachers in provide rapid crisis response and DE-escalation, as well as 50 faculty/administrative staff on social skills, anxiety, early identification of children at risk of serious emotional disturbance (SED), and referral to services. We seek to increase identification and referrals of children from schools by 25% over the 2-year project period. To address the mental health needs of our staff and prevent further burnout, we will establish a training center that offers training, professional support and development for staff, hire two FTE clinical supervisors with expertise in trauma and substance use for additional staff support, and offer four full-day workshops to increase staff skills, support staff, prevent burn-out, and increase staff cohesion post-covid. Finally, we will hire 1 FTE outreach director to develop and implement outreach strategies and referral pathways for the hispanic community, seeking to increase BH service provision to this population by 100% over the two-year grant period. The project will serve 1,768 unduplicated individuals in the first year of the project and 2,334 throughout the lifetime of the project.