Academy for Community Behavioral Health (ACBH)
Academy for Community Behavioral Health (ACBH)
City implementation partners: Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity and the CUNY School of Professional Studies
The Academy for Community Behavioral Health (the Academy) provides training, coaching, and technical assistance that build the capacity of community-based organizations, City and State agencies, and others to integrate proactive and culturally responsive behavioral health support into social services. Every day, social service providers encounter a range of behavioral health issues and have important opportunities to deliver care. The Academy aims to empower social service providers with skills and resources to name and address behavioral health and support to manage the emotional demands of their work.
This program formally launched in October 2021; Data will be reported once it is fully operational
About 1 in 3
participants seeking social services – such as job placement and training, HIV testing, domestic violence support, legal services and adult education – screened positive for mental health symptoms in an evaluation of the Connections to Care program. Source.
Social service providers
regularly report that mental health needs prevent clients from succeeding. Coupled with the fact that 30% of the total population of New York City (or around 2.6 million people) resides in federally designated mental health professional shortage areas (Source), it has become imperative that we expand the number of people and organizations that can offer behavioral health support to New Yorkers where they live and work.