Delivering behavioral health and disability services

When a child or an adult desperately requires mental healthcare, where do they turn? What about anyone with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or those struggling with addiction? These are especially crucial questions when individuals and families don’t have the financial means to connect with the services they need—support that often determines their very survival.

At Guidehouse, we’re dedicated to improving lives by helping health and human services organizations expand access to high-quality, affordable care and modernize behavioral health and disability services across the United States. Our strategic collaborations tackle pressing challenges, from reducing opioid-related deaths to enhancing access to top-tier services for families whose children are living with disabilities or behavioral health issues.

California invests in student behavioral health access

Following a national increase in mental health hospitalizations, death by suicide, and overdose deaths in children and youth, the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) is leading a transformative effort to help the state’s 1.4 million students, from transitional kindergarten to grade 12, access and receive the behavioral health services they are entitled to—the first time, and every time, they seek care.

The state allocated $389 million to create the Student Behavioral Health Incentive Program (SBHIP) under the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. DHCS partnered with local educational and behavioral health entities to provide incentive payments for Medi-Cal managed care plans and revolutionize youth access to intervention services.

California selected Guidehouse to help implement SBHIP and coordinate strategies at both the state and local levels. Our team is assessing program requirements, analyzing program deliverables to better understand individual communities’ student behavioral health needs, monitoring progress, and demonstrating the program’s impact. We’re also increasing stakeholder engagement and fostering collaborative partnerships among schools, county behavioral health departments, and county offices of education.

The impact of these efforts is profound, with 147 school-based interventions underway to improve behavioral healthcare for students with targeted interventions such as wellness programs, telehealth, screenings, referrals, and parenting and family services. Early identification and treatment through school-affiliated behavioral health services can reduce emergency room visits, crisis situations, and inpatient stays, according to DHCS. It can also help avoid transferring youth to high-cost special education settings and out-of-home placement.

Many of these interventions include new services that weren’t previously provided by counties. For instance, one rural county is using SBHIP funds for a mobile behavioral health wellness center offering preventive care for local students, while another is partnering with universities to staff wellness centers with social work interns from graduate programs.