What is the Campaign for Community Wellness?
The Campaign for Community Wellness is an effort to coordinate and leverage key initiatives of the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) programs. The goals of the Campaign are to transform the mental health system in Placer County using innovative, collaborative, culturally competent and consumer-guided approaches with the end result being to reduce stigma and embrace recovery. A key component to the Campaign is reaching underserved segments of the community including: transition-age youth (18 years and above), Latino and Native Americans.

How is the Campaign for Community Wellness different from MHSA, SAMHSA?
Simply put, the Campaign for Community Wellness is the coordination effort between two major funding streams, MHSA and SAMHSA. MHSA is a multi-year, state initiative and SAMHSA is a 6-year federal funding stream. Both have different requirements but many over-lap and this overlap is what the Campaign is leveraging and expanding upon.

How can my organization get involved?
Come to one of the monthly Campaign Steering Committee meetings. Click here for details.

How are decisions made?
The Campaign for Community Wellness is driven by a Steering Committee comprised of consumers, families, and community based organizations that work in the mental health services. This group makes key recommendations around strategic and funding priorities based on data, evidence based practices and input from outreach efforts in the community. Recommendations are made through a consensus model of decision-making. These recommendations are then given to System of Care staff that operationalizes the input into a plan. This plan is reviewed by the Steering Committee and then submitted to the State. Public comment is welcome through out this process.

Specific to MHSA: The agreed upon set of recommendation, per above, are sent to HHS staff who submit a final Plan to the Mental Health Board for approval. Prior to the Mental Health Board’s decision, public comment is sought for 30-days on the Plan.

What is happening around housing?
Housing is a key component in the over-all Campaign efforts to help people who have mental illness live independently.

Current effort around housing include:

Specific to MHSA: Housing is one of the six funding priorities for MHSA but has yet to be released by the State. When requirements are released, the Campaign will invite key housing partners to the table to design strategic and funding priorities.

What are you doing about core services that aren’t covered by MHSA or SAMHSA funding?
One of the strategies of the Campaign for Community Wellness is to broaden the scope and reach of transforming mental health services by coordinating and leveraging the work of SAMHSA and MHSA. Essential elements of the Campaign include working to make all services culturally competent, co-occurring competent, family and consumer-centered, and by doing this, we are improving all services.

How are you involving consumers and families of those with mentally illness?
Consumers and family members of consumers are key to the success of this Campaign. We know this and work hard to involve consumers and family members in Campaign planning efforts including serving on the Steering Committee, as well as staff positions and implementing key projects down the road.

Consumer voice is at the center of this Campaign!