The Community Mental Health & Substance Abuse Program Services Section administers mental health and substance abuse programs and consists of four units.

The Program Design Unit is responsible for the development, implementation and oversight of an Annual Statewide MH/SA Community Services Strategic Plan for delivering community mental health and substance abuse services. The strategic plan emphasizes positive outcomes for clients as the foundation of the plan. This unit researches national trends in order to keep current with service improvements and program designs such as evidence based practices. This unit employs data to identify and create new initiatives and improvements that are consistent with the strategic plan. Based on new and ongoing program designs, this unit also writes statements of work for grants and contracts.

When new initiatives meet criteria for available funding, this unit is responsible for designing the services and then coordinating the cross functional teams who will respond to grant proposals in order to secure funding. Awarded grants are transferred to the Program Implementation section.

Staff in the unit also serves as liaisons with other agencies, stakeholders, agency staff and providers to develop new services and program designs.

Policy, rules and procedures that affect the division program planning and design are initiated and developed in this unit and then coordinated with the Operational Support Services Unit of the Office of the Assistant Commissioner.

The Program Implementation Unit provides clinical and programmatic service coordination with other agencies, stakeholders, agency staff and providers on the implementation of programs and services.

The unit is responsible for capacity building by identifying gaps in services and service types. As gaps are identified, this unit is responsible for identifying and developing potential service providers in an effort to increase statewide service capacity.

This unit is responsible for implementing grant awards and provides grant management. This includes responsibility for oversight of program and design fidelity during the implementation phase of the program.

This unit monitors the effectiveness of the statewide services system and program practices. Rather than looking at individual providers, this unit looks at the entire state and determines effectiveness of service type, program or initiative. This function is separate and apart from contract compliance. This responsibility includes identifying when a service type, program or initiative has been successful and should be considered for replication. This unit coordinates with the Decision Support Unit and Operational Support Services to provide the narrative analysis of any variance from agency performance measures.

The Decision Support unit serves as the central supplier of data. The unit provides data to be used for the purposes of reporting, evaluation, monitoring and determining contract compliance. Data, research and analysis are generated in this unit and reviewed not only for use in monitoring individual program compliance but also for identifying statewide trends and concerns.

This unit develops risk assessment instruments to be used for development of the Annual Statewide Quality Management Plan developed by the Quality Management and Compliance Unit.

This unit is responsible for conducting needs assessment to assist the Program Design Unit in developing the Annual Statewide MH/SA Community Services Strategic Plan.

This unit is responsible for reporting on agency performance measures. This effort is coordinated with the Program Implementation Unit, which provides the narrative analysis of any variances, and with the Operational Support Unit, which coordinates reporting of performance measures for the entire division.

The NorthStar and Special Initiatives unit is self-contained and provides all aspects of design, implementation, contract management, compliance, enforcement and data operations of the NorthSTAR project.

This unit also designs, implements and manages special initiatives such as the FEMA Hurricane Disaster Response. Duties include managing service contracts for the disaster response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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Last Updated October 20, 2006