Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Behavioral Health topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
City task force offers broad recommendations to engage hard-to-reach adults with serious mental illness
Summary
The CARE Task Force presented dozens of recommendations to engage adults with serious mental illness and co-occurring substance use disorders who are not connected to care. Proposals range from peer respite programs and expanded case management to data-sharing improvements and policy advocacy; the commission asked for prioritization, costing and cohort estimates.
The CARE (Contact, Assess, Recover, Ensure Success) Task Force presented a set of recommendations to the Health Commission aimed at adults with serious mental illness who are not engaging in services and often have co-occurring substance use disorders.
Jill Robinson, director of Community Behavioral Health Services, described the task force—s goal to identify programmatic and policy changes to reach a population that often hovers at the edge of formal treatment. Lonnie Kent of the Mayor—s Office walked the commission through a long list of proposals: expand peer specialists and peer respite programs, develop hybrid psychiatric-respite models combining clinicians and peers, increase intensive case-management and full-service partnership slots, explore assisted outpatient treatment and related legal tools, enhance homeless outreach and harm-reduction housing, and pursue state and federal policy changes such as broader Medi-Cal coverage for substance-use services.
Robinson and Kent emphasized that many recommendations grew from public comment and multi-departmental task-force meetings. The proposal set also called for better and faster information-sharing across agencies; task-force members flagged HIPAA interpretations and incompatible data systems as barriers to timely coordination. Staff reported that some items are already underway (funding for additional peer specialists, expansion of respite models, and efforts to secure safe-haven beds).
Commissioners pressed for clearer definitions and prioritized next steps: they asked staff to define the target cohort (how many people would be served), differentiate among subpopulations within the recommendation set, provide cost estimates and timetables for near-term actions, and propose measurable outcomes. DPH committed to returning with prioritized recommendations, estimated client counts and costing information to support implementation decisions and budget planning.
The commission did not vote on a resolution at this meeting; staff said a resolution and more complete implementation plan will return to the commission after prioritization and costing.
