27-02, In-Home Intervention Program

The St. Mary's County Health Department Local Behavioral Health Authority (SMCHD LBHA), in conjunction with Charles County and Calvert County, is issuing Request for Proposals 27-02 to procure an In-Home Intervention Program for Children across all three counties. The program targets children and adolescents with behavioral health issues at risk for out-of-home placement or institutional admission, delivering brief, intensive in-home interventions to prevent costly emergency department visits and residential treatment center admissions. The selected provider must be an approved Psychiatric Rehabilitation Program (PRP) under COMAR 10.63 and maintain approval as a 1915(i) Intensive In Home Services/Promising Practice IHIS Provider, with required staffing including a minimum of 0.5 FTE Master's level licensed mental health clinician and 2.0 FTE Bachelor's level staff with greater than two years of experience per team of 12 youth, plus 24/7 on-call crisis response availability. The provider must serve specific daily caseloads of seven youth in St. Mary's County, ten in Calvert County, and seven in Charles County, providing an average of six direct clinical service hours per week during the first 45 days and two hours per week thereafter, with an average service length of less than fifteen months. Technical proposals will be evaluated on qualifications of staff, philosophy and approach to service delivery, quality improvement and reporting, and implementation and operations strategy for a maximum of 100 points, while pricing proposals will be evaluated separately for a maximum of 30 points. A mandatory pre-proposal meeting will be held via Google Meet on May 26, 2026, at 10:00 AM EST with attendance required for proposal eligibility, and proposals must be submitted by 3:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on June 3, 2026, via email to smchd.contracts@maryland.gov. Services are expected to commence on July 1, 2026, with a one-year initial term and four optional one-year renewals contingent upon grant funding and mutual consent.

The RFP does not specify set-aside designations or restrictions limiting types of organizations that can respond, nor does it identify any incumbent vendors or current contractors. Providers must maintain comprehensive liability insurance of at least $1,000,000, professional liability insurance of $1,000,000, and workers' compensation coverage, and comply with all applicable federal regulations including HIPAA and state COMAR regulations. Monthly reporting requirements are extensive and include demographic information, number of individuals served, average length of care episodes, percentages of in-person versus telehealth sessions, collaboration activities, outreach efforts, referral acceptance rates, crisis response times, treatment plan timeliness, and outcome measures including rates of juvenile justice involvement, behavioral health hospitalization, and out-of-home placements. The program requires monthly fidelity scale achievement of 4.2 minimum with a 4.5 annual average, and line item budgets must be broken down separately for each of the three counties based on the number of youth served, with monthly invoices due by the 15th of the following month. Funding for this contract is derived from Maryland Department of Health appropriated funds designated for community mental health services in the five-county catchment area of the formerly closed Crownsville Hospital Center; however, a specific award value or budget range is not disclosed in the RFP documentation.