Butte resilience initiative (BRI) - the butte resilience initiative (BRI) will transform a decade of disaster-driven, reactive trauma responses into a permanent, sustainable behavioral health system…

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded Butte County Office of Education $970,000 on September 30, 2026, under the Center for Mental Health Services Projects of Regional and National Significance program (CFDA 93.532) to establish the Butte Resilience Initiative (BRI), a four-year behavioral health system serving Butte County, California schools.

BRI will deploy licensed and associate clinicians across 30 school sites in 9 local educational agencies, phased in over four years with services prioritized by need and site readiness. The initiative uses Innovative Strategies Group's School Wellness Integration Model (SWIM), a multi-tiered system of support designed to transition clinical services from grant-funded positions to Medi-Cal billing, creating financial sustainability. Butte County Office of Education leads the initiative in partnership with Innovative Strategies Group and Feather River Tribal Health.

Services span mountain, foothill, and rural communities across Butte County's population of 209,800, addressing acute behavioral health needs: half of county K–12 students report chronic sadness or hopelessness (compared to 37% statewide), and the suicide death rate runs 60 percent above state average. The initiative will serve an estimated 3,688 K–12 students and staff in Year 1, scaling to 10,698 in Year 4, for a cumulative total of 29,066 unduplicated individuals served.

Performance runs from September 30, 2026, through September 29, 2030, with place of performance in Oroville, California.

Butte resilience initiative (BRI) - the butte resilience initiative (BRI) will transform a decade of disaster-driven, reactive trauma responses into a permanent, sustainable behavioral health system embedded directly in butte county, california schools. Led by butte county office of education (bcoe), in partnership with innovative strategies group (ISG) and feather river tribal health (frth), BRI will seed-fund the installation of licensed/associate clinicians on campus at 30 school sites across 9 local educational agencies (leas) and enhance school capacity to manage their behavioral health systems. Using ISG's school wellness integration model (swim), clinical services will be increasingly billed to medi-CAL, eliminating reliance on grant-funding for these essential positions and program infrastructure. Through BRI, butte county's ecosystem of care will become a portable prototype for other disaster-afflicted regions to implement. BRI will serve schools across butte county (population 209,800), phasing in services over four years across the 30 school sites, prioritized by level of need, existing infrastructure, and site readiness. The service area spans mountain (paradise), foothill/town (oroville, gridley, thermalito), and rural/remote (palermo, golden feather, pioneer) communities. The estimated number of k-12 students and staff served will be 3,688 in year 1, 5,859 in year 2, 8,821 in year 3, and 10,698 in year 4, for a cumulative total of 29,066 unduplicated individuals served. The population to be served carries a disproportionate, cumulative trauma burden: half of county students report chronic sadness or hopelessness (VS. 37% statewide), and the county's suicide death rate is 60% higher than the state average; these burdens occur against a backdrop of physician shortages and rural access barriers that leave most of these needs unidentified and untreated. BRI addresses this through implementing swim, which uses a multi-tiered system of support (mtss) framework to sustain trauma-informed mental health care in schools: tier 1 universal screening and social-emotional learning (SEL) programming; tier 2 certified wellness coaches providing mentoring, case management, and group support; and tier 3 clinicians, embedded through the frth partnership, delivering evidence-based direct treatment. Campus-based coordination of services teams (cost) and universal referral systems integrate identification, referral, and service delivery at every site, while medi-CAL billing and california's children and youth behavioral health initiative multi-payer fee schedule sustain services for all students beyond the grant period. BRI is guided by five goals: 1) building LEA capacity for an integrated, sustainable trauma-informed behavioral health system; 2) implementing school-based trauma support and mental health services at 30 schools to increase access and utilization; 3) engaging families, school personnel, and community members to solicit community voice, build awareness and ensure responsive service coordination; 4) implementing a rigorous evaluation system to monitor fidelity and assess outcomes; and 5) sustaining the system of care beyond federal funding. Measurable objectives include executing partner contracts; developing a train-the-trainer model for clinicians; placing at least 30 clinicians across 30 schools; implementing cost teams and universal referral systems at every site; training school personnel, families and partners; executing rigorous evaluation; establishing medical billing for sustained funding; and developing a comprehensive sustainability plan; objectives that directly advance samhsa's strategic priorities to expand access to crisis intervention and evidence-based treatment, address emerging behavioral health threats, and build systems that sustain outcomes after the grant period ends.