MD Discretionary Funding Fiscal Year 2014

This proposal, RURAL Crisis and At Risk for Escalation diversion Services for children (RURAL CARES), will expand and adapt the urban foster care model developed under a current Children's Mental Health Initiative (CMHI) Cooperative Agreement in Baltimore city to meet the unique needs of our rural communities. Maryland's Eastern Shore faces cultural and geographic challenges common in rural jurisdictions including poverty, isolated communities, inadequate access to care, and significant stigma associated with mental health care. Lack of workforce is also an issue. Seven of these nine counties have been designated in full as Health Professional Shortage Areas for mental health by the Health Resources and Services Administration. RURAL CARES will give us the capacity to keep these children in their home communities.

The Pediatric Integrated Care Collaborative (PICC) will (1) increase the quality of child trauma services by integrating behavioral and physical health services targeting traumatic stress exposure and recovery, (2) extend accessibility of services by integrating trauma-informed behavioral health services with primary care, and (3) promote a sustainable integration through a Breakthrough Series, Learning Collaborative, and a Training and Resource Toolkit. The PICC will be based at Center for Mental Health Services in Pediatric Primary Care (CMHPC). The Center will support three levels of collaborative activity: (1) A Breakthrough Series Collaborative will generate and test innovations to bridge the gaps between existing practices for prevention/early intervention for toxic stress in young children and the application of these practices within primary care settings; (2) A Learning Collaborative will promote the dissemination and adoption of these innovations and develop a Pediatric Integrated Care Training and Resource Toolkit; (3) Support will be provided for the newly forming NCTSN Integrated Care Collaborative Group (ICCG) of participants throughout NCTSN sites and affiliates. Dissemination will also be facilitated through the CMHPC's six core sites, its links to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and its hosting of the National Network of Child Psychiatry Access Programs.

The White Mountain Apache (Apache) Tribe in partnership with Johns Hopkins responds to SAMHSA Grant SM 13-010 to build upon and expand its current youth suicide prevention program. The proposed initiative, titled Empowering our Spirits, will apply a multi-tiered prevention strategy including three culturally-adapted evidence-based interventions with a unique community suicide surveillance system serving as a foundation to track change. Primary intervention targets will include: community-wide education to promote protective factors and reduce risks, led by Elders; early identification and referral of high-risk youth; and intensive outreach to suicidal youth including an intervention with youth who attempt suicide and their families. Measureable Objectives: Tier 1 Universal objectives are to maintain and build broad, integrated capacity for suicide prevention; promote awareness and skills to prevent high risk behaviors in youth and facilitate community preventative services; and collaborate with existing media on a cohesive, multidisciplinary campaign promoting protective factors and the National Lifeline. Tier 2 Selected intervention objectives are to promote recognition of at-risk behaviors and facilitate triage to timely and effective clinical services; boost protective factors among youth with implementation of school-based Sources of strength program; facilitate mental well-being through inter-generational relationships and cultural promotion; and support those affected by suicide, promote healing and help prevent further suicide. Tier 3 Indicated intervention objectives are to extend the timeliness and usefulness of surveillance data, and improve access and community linkages to mental health and substance abuse services for youth.

Maryland submits Launching Individual Futures Together (LIFT) to infuse SOC practice and principles throughout the entire public behavioral health system for children and families. Building upon progress made in developing a comprehensive behavioral health strategic plan for youth with co-occurring mental health and substance use needs and their families, LIFT will target youth, ages 13-17, with serious emotional disturbance and co-occurring substance abuse needs. LIFT will put into practice Maryland's implementation of the Patient Care and Protection Affordable Care Act (ACA), which includes full merger of mental health and substance abuse authority and rollout of a new Medicaid financing and behavioral health integration model, at the local level while addressing a critical gap in the public behavioral health system service delivery.

The Maryland LAUNCH, is designed to coordinate key child-serving systems and integrate behavioral and physical health services to ensure that children are able to thrive in safe, supportive environments and enter school ready to learn in the pilot community of Prince George's County ("the County"), Maryland. In order to promote the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and behavioral wellbeing of children birth to age eight and their families, Maryland LAUNCH will enhance the collaboration among State and local child-serving agencies; increase the use of early screenings, assessments, and mental health consultations; increase integration of behavioral health and primary care; enhance home visiting; and provide family strengthening and parent skills training.

The Maryland Coalition of Families for Children's Mental Health (MCF) will address two major issues in the Statewide Family Network proposal a) prevention of mental health and substance abuse disorders and, b) support to military families. MCF will also support youth leadership development.

Montgomery College strives to create a prepared community with a focus toward preventing and/or reducing the number of suicides and suicide attempts, and seeks to address the need of the College to enhance prevention resources for its counseling staff, faculty, leadership, students, families, and its communities. To inform and guide this initiative, the College will utilize its new Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) on each campus as well centrally (college-wide) through the BIT Steering Committee. This dual strategy allows for localized support on each of its three campuses while it facilitates institutionalization of the project. This is a transformational project, and the first time submitting to the Campus Suicide Prevention Program. Traditionally, College counselors are trained primarily to provide academic advising. To increase campus suicide prevention efforts, the College is now poised to propose MC Project Aware, and address two goals relating to: (1) mental health training, and (2) capacity building through enhanced linkages internally and externally. The increased awareness and related activities, informed by research, ensure that these two measurable goals are met. The transformation will be sustained over time through BIT. Montgomery College is a public, open admissions community college in Maryland within the Washington, DC Greater Metropolitan Area, with campuses in Germantown, Rockville, and Takoma Park/Silver Spring, all serving key geographic locations. The college serves more than 60,000 diverse students a year through both credit and noncredit programs in more than 100 areas of study. More than 170 countries are represented on the three campuses. The number of foreign-born residents accounts for a remarkable 30% of the county's population. More than 500 veterans attend classes. Student organizations and clubs on campus include veteran and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) populations.

On Our Own of Maryland (OOOMD) is a statewide mental health consumer-operated training and advocacy organization that works to strengthen Maryland's statewide network of 24 peer-operated programs by providing training and education on: trauma-informed, recovery-based wellness strategies; leadership and advocacy skills development; organizational development; cultural competency; healthcare reform; and mental health and addiction parity laws. We anticipate that throughout the life of this grant, OOOMD and affiliated organizations, including the consumer-operated peer wellness and recovery centers, will serve approximately 15,000 people through training, advocacy, and peer support efforts. The main goal and name of this project is Infusing the Consumer Voice in Behavioral Health Integration to ensure that consumer voice and advocacy are heard and integrated and that peer-operated services are sustained as Maryland currently is merging state mental health and substance use administrations into one state Behavioral Health Administration as well as implementing new service delivery systems and funding mechanisms. The project will expand opportunities for involving adult and young adult mental health consumers in mental health and behavioral health systems planning and related public policy advocacy. In addition, OOOMD will infuse trauma-informed care into peer support programs via Learning Community style training activities and Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Service (CLAS) Standards via the continuation of a statewide cultural competency assessment to strengthen Maryland's Statewide Consumer Network. We will develop stronger consumer organizations through business development training via specialized workshops and provide ongoing support and hands-on technical assistance via skilled staff and consultants. OOOMD will further develop existing relationships with the broader mental health community and forge new partnerships.

The Suicide Prevention Program at Salisbury University (SU) is a collaboration of University departments and organizations, both on and off campus, seeking to best serve approximately 8,400 undergraduate and graduate students. A multi-pronged approach will be used to educate the campus community, including educational media campaign. E-trainings and in-person discussion groups for students, faculty, and staff serve as the core of our approach. By the end of our funding cycle, we expect to demonstrate increases in faculty, staff, and students' knowledge of the resources available to students, ability to identify and discuss warning signs of distress, comfort with assisting students in need of help, and, i f appropriate, capacity to refer students to the campus Counseling Center. Of particular focus is decreasing the stigma attached to seeking and receiving mental health assistance, as well as increasing outreach to historically underserved and at-risk populations on campus. All 10,000 members of the campus community will be served on an annual basis via the educational media campaign. As a result, it is expected that several thousand students, staff, and faculty will complete training programs and that hundreds of at-risk students will receive mental health services SU is located on the rural Eastern Shore of Maryland and is part of the University System of Maryland. SU is a growth university, and as such, we expect our student population to expand; generally 2,100 new and transfer students enter SU each year. Approximately 20% of the student population at SU consists of minority students; of the 616 faculty members and 1007 staff, 10.4% of the faculty and 35.4% of the staff are also members of historically defined
minority populations.

The Family-Informed Trauma Treatment (FITT) Center, proposes to lead national and local efforts to understand the impact of trauma, especially complex trauma, on families; to recognize that families are the foundation through which children comprehend and cope with their traumatic experiences; and to understand that family trauma interventions optimize healing. The FITT Center proposes to enhance system capacity to address the needs of children and their families using a two-pronged approach of increasing provider capacity (Objectives 1 and 2) and consumer advocacy voice (Objective 3). The Center's Objectives are to: (1) Increase the availability of training and tools for child service systems' workforces to enhance knowledge and skills necessary to work with family systems exposed to chronic trauma related to poverty by widely disseminating the FITT Toolkit and developing innovative training curricula focusing on family informed, evidence-based trauma interventions for mental health professionals and master and doctoral students. (2) Improve access to three effective family trauma treatments, Strengthening Families Coping Resources (SFCR), Trauma Adapted Family Connections (TA-FC), FamilyLive (FL), and a family based assessment and treatment planning tool, Family Assessment of Needs and Strengths-Trauma (FANS-Trauma) through collaborations with 19 CTCs and other provider organizations that support large numbers of families living in poverty. (3) Develop messages and tools designed to help families be heard as they advocate in the public arena and within child service systems.