Afcac ccbhc expansion - all faiths children's advocacy center (afcac) has been serving families in the new mexico community since 1956, offering a variety of quality behavioral health services

There is a need to increase services to address substance use, suicidality, and mental health in new mexico. New mexico continues to have unmet needs and behavioral health disparities for serious mental illness, substance use disorder (SUD), individuals with CO-occurring disorders (COD) and children and youth with serious emotional disturbances. Service gaps include lower accessibility to services, lack of substance use disorder and mental health providers, and lack of transportation. Ccbhc PDI funds will be used to increase outreach and access to behavioral health treatments and build our capacity to provide comprehensive, higher acuity care for adults, adolescents, and children and increase the number of patients we serve. In CY2022 we served 2,931 patients. We anticipate 775 individuals to be eligible for ccbhc services in year one, 825 in year two, 925 in year three, and 1,125 in year four. By the end of the four year grant period, we expect to serve 1,325 unduplicated patients. Our goals are to decrease health disparities for SUD and COD, enhance access to behavioral health services for families, and commence substance use disorder services. We will do this by establishing a school district partner in valencia county, increasing services for veterans, closing racial/ethnic disparities affecting access to behavioral health services, hiring nine culturally reflective staff to reduce our current waitlist, enhancing our data collection of sexual orientation and gender identity (sogi) information, expanding our delivery of telehealth services, applying for and obtaining our SUD license, launching SUD services and beginning referrals for SUD services.