A Growing Need for Mental Health Care: Expanded FSP Offerings To Include 2 New Programs
Mental health conditions are becoming more prevalent throughout the United States, with low-income populations and communities of color facing higher barriers to access and quality care. In the U.S., it is estimated that more than 23 percent of adults, or roughly 1 in 5, live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022). Six percent experience serious mental illness resulting in serious functional impairment that significantly interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. In California, 14.3 percent of adults, or one-in-seven, live with a mental illness, while 3.9 percent of adults experience a serious mental illness. Among children, 7.3 percent of youth have a serious emotional disturbance that limits functioning in family, school, or community activities.
“For a while, we recognized we needed more FSP programs, but the project helped us have the structure around how best to do that. It was a way to make sure we did it right.”
— Julie Glantz, Senior Behavioral Health Manager, Ventura County Behavioral Health
Policies, Practices, and Resource Flows
Since 2020, Ventura County Behavioral Health (VCBH) has dedicated significant time and resources to clarifying and strengthening Full Service Partnership (FSP) policies, practices, and resource flows. Key structural changes have centered around the introduction of standardized practices such as new operational guidelines, the adoption of specific population definitions and outcome metrics, and the incorporation of enhanced data and reporting practices. By improving key internal processes, the agency has positioned itself to better and more equitably serve individuals in the region who struggle with severe mental and behavioral health challenges.
Changing Systems, Changes Lives
One of many noteworthy structural changes brought about by the FSP improvement work in Ventura County is the expansion of FSP program offerings. Since 2022, VCBH has launched two new FSP programs, including a youth and family FSP program and a new FSP program for adults, to meet the needs of diverse populations in the county. The landscape analysis Third Sector prepared during Phase 1 of the Multi-County FSP Innovation Project played an important role in this process by helping to identify gaps in existing programs, and the operational guidelines provided a foundation and structure that made it easy to bring the new programs to life.
YOUTH FSP PROGRAM
Third Sector’s landscape analysis underscored that VCBH lacked a dedicated and specialized FSP program for youth who were not involved in the criminal justice system. This reduced the agency’s ability to address the unique needs, experiences, and challenges of the age group. In response, VCBH successfully launched a new youth and family FSP program called Achieving Together Linkage, Access, and Support (ATLAS) at the end of 2022. They hired a clinic administrator and other new staff to support the program and leverage the operational guidelines to establish strong client-management processes.
The inaugural clinic administrator for ATLAS emphasized that the guidelines are essential to the program’s success, sharing,
“It is a part of my onboarding process to provide (my staff) with that operational guide to support them in asking questions about it, to make sure that they understand what our criteria are, how clients are accepted into the FSP, and how they engage in our services.”
In its first year of operation (FY 22–23), ATLAS served eight individuals from Ventura County. In line with FSP requirements, all of these individuals came from diverse or high-need backgrounds, including 62.5 percent (five of eight) who are people of color.
“As a result of this project, we have a youth FSP. We now have a model, and we have it implemented, and we’ve got great people in charge. And they have the advantage of knowing what you need to do and trying to start to do it right from the get-go.”
— Sloane Burt, Quality Improvement Manager, Ventura County Behavioral Health
ADULT FSP PROGRAM
VCBH also introduced a new FSP program for adults. This program pulled adult FSP clients who had previously been dispersed throughout different VCBH programs in a “treatment track” model into one dedicated program with a dedicated FSP program team. The decision to launch this adult FSP program was also informed by Third Sector’s landscape analysis. At that time, VCBH offered six adult FSP programs, serving older adults (60+), adults requiring longer-term care, and adults who were justice-involved. Any adult FSP clients who did not qualify for these programs were dispersed to different clinics on a treatment track rather than a standalone FSP program. The landscape analysis revealed that the treatment track model often led to the conflation of FSPs and traditional levels of care, resulting in some clients not getting as much of the intensive support they needed.
To provide more dedicated and responsive services to these adult FSP clients, VCBH moved them out of the treatment track and into a dedicated adult FSP program. “When we looked at what we had to do in terms of what treatment should be offered to (FSP clients) spread out across different clinics rather than a standalone FSP program, we were way off in terms of what they were actually getting,” shared one VCBH employee. “So that’s when we decided if we were going to have these standard levels of care, we needed to really pull them out of that treatment track model and put them into a standalone program.” In its first year of operation (FY 22–23), the new adult FSP program served 92 individuals from Ventura County. In line with FSP requirements, all of these individuals came from diverse or high-need backgrounds, including 55.4 percent (51 out of 92) who are people of color.
As a result of these programs, VCBH is seeing early signs of improvement for community outcomes, including an increase in the number of community members served, at 364 total (339 adults and 25 youth). Participants’ perceptions of how services impacted their ability to take care of their own needs increased to 81%.
The launch of these two new programs created a strong foundation for how to plan and launch responsive FSP programs, and this foundation will continue to benefit VCBH as it expands key programming in the future.
