Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Board approves Youth Optimal Care Pathways to expand early intervention and crisis services for young people
Loading...
Summary
County behavioral‑health leaders presented a Youth Optimal Care Pathways model that projects growth across early intervention, crisis response, intensive community services and residential care; the board authorized competitive procurements and data‑sharing steps to expand school‑based early intervention and coordination.
San Diego County supervisors unanimously approved actions on March 25 to advance a Youth Optimal Care Pathways (Youth OCP) framework aimed at expanding prevention, early intervention and crisis‑response services for children, adolescents and transition‑age youth.
County Behavioral Health Services (BHS) staff presented modeled capacity targets and engagement strategies. The presentation said roughly 373,000 local youth and young adults (ages 0–25) are enrolled in Medi‑Cal, an estimated 100,000 of whom may need some level of mental‑health treatment; about 67,000 meet specialty mental‑health service criteria through BHS but only approximately 19,000 received BHS services last year. Staff proposed a five‑year growth strategy focusing on school‑based early intervention, increased outpatient and substance‑use outpatient capacity, expanded crisis services (mobile crisis teams and crisis stabilization), intensive community services and modest residential expansion.
BHS requested authority to competitively procure two school‑based early intervention programs (the school‑based Incredible Years and a school‑based skill‑building program), to establish or update interagency data‑sharing agreements (county departments, hospital systems and managed‑care plans) and to begin formal discussions with hospitals and plans on data sharing to improve care coordination.
Stakeholders — including pediatric and youth behavioral‑health providers, school partners and advocacy groups — broadly supported the framework, while callers urged additional emphasis on prevention and services for young children and transitional‑age youth. The board approved the requested actions without dissent.
What happens next: procurement work and data‑sharing agreements will move forward under BHS direction and staff will pursue partnerships to expand integrated care for youth across settings.
