Board hears limits on evidence-based practice capacity for Humboldt’s Full Service Partnership

Humboldt County staff described the county’s Full Service Partnership program—locally called Comprehensive Community Treatment (CCT)—as the highest-intensity BHSA service for people at risk of homelessness, hospitalization, or justice involvement. The program is based on assertive community treatment models and is the county’s primary means of delivering intensive, "whatever-it-takes" services.

Oliver Gonzalez said FSP housing costs must now be funded through the housing-intervention bucket, and that the BHSA requires counties to implement certain evidence-based practices (EBPs). "Some of the evidence-based practices that are required…we can't stand up fully because we just don't have the staffing capacity to do so," Gonzalez said, noting state estimates for clinician numbers exceed local availability. He added the county will leverage small-county exemptions and develop policies to provide low-barrier medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and to serve people with standalone substance-use diagnoses within FSP.

Board members received the update and discussed staffing and housing availability as interdependent constraints on service expansion. Gonzalez said staff are drafting procedures to use existing pipelines and provider relationships to meet BHSA requirements as feasible.