The Butler County Mental Health Board frequently offers free trainings and free Continuing Education Units for Licensed Ohio Mental Health Counselors, Social Workers, and Marriage and Family Therapists.
Press Release 2/7/2013Hamilton’s Transitional Living, Inc. has been recognized by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for their outstanding work with the Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) federal grant.
SAMHSA Grantee Spotlight: Ohio’s Transitional Living, Inc.
Author: Dampeer, Joyce
Description: Transitional Living, Inc., the PATH grantee in Butler County, Ohio, has been selected for the February 2013 SAMHSA Grantee Spotlight. The program collaborates with local law enforcement and mental health systems. These partnerships provide the program with the opportunity to effectively advocate for individuals who are homeless, ensuring that they are no longer overlooked in their community.
Content: Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) is a federally funded grant program that provides financial assistance to states and territories in an effort to end homelessness. Nationally, PATH funds about 600 projects, and the Transitional Living, Inc. program based in Butler County, Ohio is one such project. The program partners with local law enforcement and mental health systems to form a partnership comprised of the following entities: Transitional Living, Inc., Butler County Community Mental Health Board, and the Ohio Department of Mental Health via the Ohio PATH Program.
Project staffing consists of a team of two full-time and four part-time staff, four of which are Peer Specialists. Another major strength of Transitional Living, Inc. is the experience of their leadership—the Chief Executive Officer has worked with Transitional Living, Inc. for 32 years, with 20 of those years as a PATH provider. The PATH project and community at large are the beneficiaries of her contributions through her consistent presence, influence, efforts, and ability to share her knowledge with team members.
The PATH staff are on call 24/7, which enables them to provide services that are responsive not only to different places of need, but also different times of need. Staff members frequent homeless camps and shelters and participate in “ride-alongs” with law enforcement during the second shift. The focus of PATH is outreach, engagement, encouragement, supportive services for education and training, and very intense community involvement. The project strives to educate and involve the community to extend the reach of the eyes and ears of the program.
The project model incorporates components of several evidence-based practices (EBPs) and additional promising practices in order to provide an enhanced service delivery approach. The EBPs most often used by the team include: Motivational Interviewing (MI) and the Integrated Dual-Diagnosis Treatment (IDDT) Model. The team provides behavioral health services, staged interventions, assertive outreach, and comprehensive services that provide a long-term approach to treatment. The project team also uses a promising practice called the Hamilton Fairfield Model of Police Training and Intervention Model. This model is built on a partnership between PATH providers and local law enforcement, and includes training and outreach to local courts in the cities of Fairfield, Hamilton, and Middletown. The community partnerships also extend to fire departments, churches, local shelters, community agencies, and elected officials.
In 1994 this project began providing mental health training to local police departments; today over 1,000 police officers have been trained. The trainings have focused not simply on knowledge dissemination and skills development, but also on empowering police officers to begin the process of approaching, engaging, and referring clients with mental health and other related challenges to the services they need. An additional value added to the officer training process is the opportunity for a mental health professional to regularly ride with officers. This team approach allows for an important extra level of training and direct professional intervention in crisis situations. Even when the “ride-along” is not taking place, the project team is available 24/7 to respond to and support officers. This partnership has resulted in a decrease in arrests and an increase in linking citizens to the appropriate services in a timely manner during crisis conditions. Additionally, there are fewer return calls by officers, thereby decreasing the “revolving door” nature of these responses.
Transitional Living, Inc. is proud of these collaborations because they are able to effectively advocate for homeless individuals with complex behavioral and medical problems “who have been ignored through the everyday hustle of technological advances in society.”
Mental Health Board Awarded Quality Certification
FAIRFIELD, OH, January 31, 2013 - On Tuesday January 29, 2013 the Butler County Mental Health Board was awarded its three year Cultural of Quality re-certification for 2013-2016 by the Ohio Association for County Behavioral Health Authorities (OACHBA). The Culture of Quality (COQ) program is based on Continuous Quality Improvement and was developed to improve the quality of county Boards administering local alcohol, drug addiction and mental health services for Ohioans.
“The COQ recertification process is a rigorous two day audit addressing approximately 150 standards. I believe it helps our county residents maintain their history of satisfaction and confidence in our programming through this increased accountability, ” said Dr. Scott Ramus, Associate Executive Director of Evaluations and Quality Assurance of the Butler County Mental Health Board. The COQ standards recognize exemplary Board performance benchmarks in areas such as Human Resources, Finances & Operations, Quality Assurance, Client Advocacy, Governance, Health & Safety, Public Affairs, and Ethics.
The BCMHB is one of twenty-five behavioral health Board areas in the state certified in COQ out of more than fifty. The BCMHB is funded primarily through local tax levies for programs and services to the uninsured and underinsured residents and their families in need of mental health services. For more information on the BCMHB and its community mental health provider system, visit the BCMHB website at www.bcmhb.org or call (513) 860-9240.
