State Budget Update: 2021-2022 Housing And Behavioral Health Funding – Opportunities For Reentry & Justice-Involved Individuals August 2021
The newly enacted 2021-2022 State budget and spending package includes over $12 billion in new funding opportunities that can be leveraged to help individuals who are justice-involved, experiencing homelessness, and have behavioral health needs. This overview of also includes new program initiatives as part of the state’s Home and Community-based Services (HCBS) Waiver spending plans.
Policy Brief: CalAIM: Implications for the Dual Eligible Population
Provides overview of the CalAIM, the ambitious new multi-year proposal by the Newsom Administration to redesign the state’s Medi-Cal Program, and how it affects beneficiaries who dually eligible for both Medicare and Medi-Cal.
Policy Brief: Trends in California Overdose Deaths
Drug-related overdose fatalities have risen 50% since 2017. Overdose fatalities are rising faster in California than in the United States where overdose deaths are up 15% over the last three years.
CalAIM: Opportunities and Implications for the Reentry and Justice-Involved Population
Provides an overview of the California Department of Health Services updated proposal to re-envision the state’s Medi-Cal program, and how it specifically address the reentry/justice-involved population. CalAIM offers a unique opportunity to improve the quality of medical and behavioral health care for this healthy vulnerable and underserved population.
The silent epidemic: drug overdose deaths surge in California pre-pandemic
Research provided by California Health Policy Strategies (CHPS) shows that the rate of increases of overdose deaths in California far surpasses the national rate of increase as of May 2020. Experts say this trend has increased as the pandemic has continued.
Policy Brief: Sacramento County School-based Mental Health: An Innovative Approach to Providing Mental Health Care to School Age Children
Describes new partnership with Sacramento County Office of Education and the Sacramento County Department of Behavioral Health to place a mental health clinician in every school.
Policy Brief: California’s Health Workforce Crisis: The Pipeline for New Psychiatrists Falls Short
The current shortage of psychiatrists in California has created a behavioral health workforce crisis that is worsening. This policy brief considers fundamental metrics to help understand the capacity of the workforce pipeline to produce new psychiatrists.
Reentry Health Policy Project: Summary of Publications
The Reentry Health Policy Project is working to (1) identify state and county-level policies and practices that impede the delivery of effective health and behavioral health care services for formerly incarcerated individuals who are medically fragile (MF) and living with serious mental illness (SMI), as they return to the community; (2) find best practices that can replicated at the state and local level; and (3) offer actionable recommendations for policy-makers and stakeholders to consider.
Policy Brief: The Prevalence of Mental Illness in California Jails is Rising. An Analysis of Mental Health Cases and Psychotropic Medication Prescriptions from 2009 to 2019
New analysis of statewide jail data finds a 42% increase in number of inmates with active mental health cases over past 10 years. The share of the jail population with an active mental health case increased by 63%. The report also looks at trends for individual county jails.
Policy Brief: Improving Effectiveness of SSI/SSDI Advocacy Programs for Jail-Incarcerated Populations
This policy brief assesses current efforts to provide federal disability benefits Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) to eligible jail inmates reentering the community. The brief describes the benefits that jail based disability advocacy programs may confer to the state, counties, sheriff’s departments, and individual recipients of
SSI/SSDI. Jails offer an effective location for disability advocacy because a significant share of inmates may qualify for SSI or SSDI when released. An estimated 16,000 justice-involved individuals, who are incarcerated for two-weeks or longer, could be prioritized for jail-based disability advocacy and application assistance each year.