California Coalition for Mental Health
The California Coalition for Mental Health is made up of 32 organizations with a membership of 115,000 mental health professionals, citizen advocates, clients and their family members across the state. As an advocacy alliance our common goal is to "restore California to a position of leadership as an initiator of state of the art treatment and rehabilitation of people who have mental illness."
Role of CCMH
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Monitor the implementation of the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA): Act as a forum to ensure that the vision behind the MHSA is being implemented at the local level. Offer trainings or other information regarding the MHSA.
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Protect from the erosion of core funding streams: EPSDT, Medi-Cal, SSI, Section 8 and Housing funding. It was noted that if core funding is not protected, the progress represented in new community-based funding through MHSA will not have its intended impact.
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Mental Health Parity and the role of the private health plans in access to mental health services: Investigate how CCMH can play an important role in ensuring that the Prevention and Early Intervention service funds under the MHSA are not overlapping with funds that should be accessed through mental health care insurance coverage. This is an important new area to learn about and reform.
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Regulatory and Legislative Role: CCMH can continue to be an informational forum for member organizations to get feedback and potentially support for regulatory or legislative initiatives. Also serve as watchdog to regulations or legislation that threatens community-based mental health services, their progress, and their funding (this includes federal regulations and legislation).
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Public education and stigma reduction: Continue to work to educate policy and opinion makers, the general public, and others about a recovery vision of mental healthcare and mental illness.
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Promote model programs and policies, including human resource development for mental health professionals: As many members come from the field, they offer a unique opportunity to identify problems within the delivery of service, as well as, the training needed to be able to provide the kinds of services that promote a recovery and discovery vision of mental healthcare.
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Protect against the criminalization of individuals with mental illness.
Agenda for Fairness
Read CCMH's Agenda For Fairness. The California Coalition for Mental Health has always operated on a consensus basis with respect to issuing letters and positions. For a number of years, the Coalition has used its "Agenda for Fairness" as its general policy platform on a wide variety of issues related to mental health services and supports The Agenda for Fairness is reviewed annually and updated to reflect changing opportunities and threats to what Coalition members have agreed are its shared core values.
