Community Behavioral Health Agency Partners
Community behavioral health agencies provide essential substance use and mental health treatment to adults and children using public funding, such as Medicaid. Because behavioral health is integral to physical health (and vice versa), community behavioral health agencies play a critical role in creating healthy and thriving communities.
More than 100 community behavioral health agencies and tribal health centers in Washington serve as student training sites and potential future employers of conditional grant students in the Ballmer Behavioral Health Scholarship Program. This on-the-ground training helps to ensure that students gain the right set of skills and confidence to make a lasting impact in
the communities they serve.
Click here to review the WDI’s complete list of community behavioral health agencies.
Eligibility
Washington State Behavioral Health Workforce Development Initiative agency-partners meet the following criteria:
- Located in a community-based setting (versus institutional setting such as inpatient programs) within Washington state OR tribal health center offering behavioral health services or tribal school.
- Employ master’s level clinical behavioral health staff from at least one of the following disciplines: mental health counseling, social work, and/or marriage and family therapy.
- Provide behavioral health services reimbursed by Medicaid.*
- Provide individual community-based mental health treatment in association with outpatient substance use disorder Level I or Level II treatment (directly or through agreement).
*The WDI used the federal Comprehensive Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) service criteria to guide the criteria for agency eligibility. The CCBHC service criteria reflect the current best practices for offering behavioral health services in a community setting. Recognizing that most agencies are unable to meet the high standard of CCBHC criteria, however, the WDI narrowed the criteria to reflect the core elements of integrated service delivery that many agencies could meet. Thus, the nine service criteria of the federal CCBHC certification became three: (1) outpatient mental health counseling, (2) outpatient SUD counseling, and (3) rehabilitative
case management.