This month SAMHSA has announced nearly $800 million in funding for community mental health services across the country, which has supported many different aspects of community-based services for the mentally ill. Specifically, it will continue to fund mental health and substance use services for those with serious mental illness, children/youth with serious emotional disturbances and adults with substance use disorders. For a community-based mental health provider this increased funding will allow them to offer more counselors, longer service hours and additional outreach to areas where mental health services are currently lacking.
Community Mental Health Block Grants and Substance Use Block Grants have been federally-supported funding programs for building community mental health systems in the United States for many years. This year’s funding awards are intended to help with reviving community mental health systems and to address continuing challenges faced by these systems due to the ongoing impact of the worldwide pandemic, ongoing workforce challenges, and increased demand for community-based mental health services. States can and should be allowed to utilize their block grant funding in a manner that works best for their communities. Some states may emphasize the need for crisis stabilization units, while other states may build on their success with school-based services or developing housing supports that are specifically tied to community-based mental health services.
Families feel that the increase in funding for community mental health means more access to affordable services. Some of the benefits are shorter waiting periods for treatment, better access to bilingual providers, more efficient coordination between services, and many others that affect the everyday life of families not just mental health. Providers point out that the people on their community mental health teams (e.g., case managers; peer specialists; social workers; psychiatrists) know their clients personally and have an intimate understanding of their history so they can provide a more individualized and less impersonal service to them.
However, experts have told us that substantially increasing the amount of funding from one-time sources cannot solve years of lack of investment in community mental health; the advocacy community currently is urging Congress to convert these one-time increases into permanent and predictable funding so that community mental health clinics will have the financial resources to hire staff; expand services; and commit to developing innovative service models without the uncertainty associated with the next budget dispute.
Leave a Comment