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Mandated Responsibilities

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In 2004, the Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) was passed to provide an opportunity for California’s counties to increase access to public mental health services, increase staffing and other resources that support public mental health programs, and monitor progress toward statewide goals for serving children, transition age youth, adults and older adults and their families.

The State’s public mental health system has suffered from a shortage of mental health workers, including underrepresentation of professionals with consumer and family member experience, and individuals who are from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural communities. To address the public mental health workforce issues, the MHSA included a component for Mental Health Workforce Education and Training (WET) programs.

As part of the planning process, Contra Costa County is required to identify shortages in occupations, skill sets, and individuals with unique cultural and linguistic competence and aspire to the following goals:

Develop a sufficient number of qualified individuals for the public mental health workforce
Increase the quality and success of educating and training the public mental health workforce
Increase the partnership and collaboration of all entities involved in public mental health education and training

There are five Workforce and Education funding categories, as indicated below:

Workforce Staffing Support
Training and Technical Assistance
Mental Health Career Pathway Programs
Residency and Internship Programs
Financial Incentive Programs

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