Home together: reducing family homelessness through integrated mental health treatment, recovery, and supportive community services - the university of arkansas for medical sciences (uams) (applicant)…

Home together: reducing family homelessness through integrated mental health treatment, recovery, and supportive community services - the university of arkansas for medical sciences (uams) (applicant) and our house shelter, INC. (OH) (sub-recipient) will collaboratively CO-lead a project for adult parents (or custodial caregivers; PCC) in pulaski county, arkansas (AR), who have a serious mental illness (SMI), serious emotional disturbance (SED) or CO-occurring SMI and substance use disorder (COD; together referred to as MI/COD) who are experiencing homelessness or at imminent risk of homelessness (ehih) with at least one child 0-18 YRS (pccf-MI/COD). Our community-based participatory project is entitled "home together: reducing family homelessness through integrated mental health treatment, recovery, and supportive community services". Home together's overarching goal is to increase access to and delivery of coordinated, comprehensive behavioral health treatment and recovery support services and increase sustainable, permanent housing among pccf-MI/COD by providing home together enrolled client families with strengths-based peer-supported case management and trauma-informed family-focused care coordination. Home together staff will enroll 90 eligible families annually (68 families in year 1) into the project and coordinate direct evidence-based services in a trauma-informed continuum of care to an average of 3 persons per family for a total of 428 unduplicated families and an unduplicated count of 1,284 individuals served over the 5-year project. Based on our successful first iteration of the home together project funded by 2018 samhsa tieh funding (SM080742) a large proportion of families served are expected to be members of underserved populations who are overrepresented in AR's homeless population. Among clients served in our project from 2019-2022, 84% self-identified as black and 3% as hispanic. Many of these individuals lived in overpoliced, racially-segregated communities of concentrated poverty that lack access to quality, culturally and linguistically appropriate healthcare and social resources, which exacerbates both chronic and acute health conditions and racial health disparities across the life course experienced by these populations. Furthermore, regardless of race or ethnicity, people with MI/COD face disproportionately high rates of poverty, housing and employment discrimination, and criminalization. In 2018, uams and OH partnered to address these long-standing needs and service gaps and (despite barriers/delays caused by covid-19 pandemic) enrolled 302 unduplicated primary clients and provided direct services to them and their 682 children in our first 4 project years, with 85% reassessment rate and 79% housing success rate at 6-month follow-up. In the current home together application, eligibility has been expanded to include fathers and other custodial caregivers as well as families with children up to 18YRS. The proposed home together project will: 1) implement multiple outreach and engagement strategies to identify and connect with individuals and families ehih and MI/COD; 2) screen all identified referrals ehih for MI/COD and project eligibility and accordingly, refer all individuals ehih screened positive for MI/COD to appropriate services with follow-up or project enrollment; 3) ensure timely delivery of integrated mental health and substance use services; 4) provide strengths-based peer-supported case management and trauma-informed family-focused care coordination for pccf-MI/COD, and 5) implement culturally and linguistically appropriate practices to increase access to and engagement in mental health, recovery, and supportive community services among underserved populations in PC.