Updates on SB 803 and Other Current Mental Health Legislation
Speaker
Roberto Roman, Contra Costa Health Services, Office for Consumer Empowerment
Summary
For our April monthly General Meeting, Roberto Roman, from Contra Costa Behavioral Health Services, Office for Consumer Empowerment, presented on the ongoing implementation of the SB 803 legislation and how it supported Contra Costa County residents.
In recent decades, peer support, which includes family lived experience, became a vital element in behavioral health services. Still, many people were unfamiliar with the work that peer support and family specialists did. Peer support involved people who navigated the system of care either as clients, parents/caregivers, or family members, using their own lived experience as a resource to mutually support one another. Promoting recovery and resiliency in people’s lives was a hallmark of peer support.
The passage of SB 803, signed into law by the Governor in September 2020, created a new potential career pathway for peers in California via a certification program into which counties could opt to certify peer support specialists as Medi-Cal providers, allowing them to claim Medi-Cal reimbursement specifically for peer support services. This afforded peers the opportunity to achieve greater heights in their service to the community.
About Roberto Roman
Roberto Roman is a Community Support Worker and Office Team Lead at Contra Costa Behavioral Health Services, Office for Consumer Empowerment (OCE). OCE is an administrative unit dedicated to promoting peer and family voices as transformative forces in the behavioral health system of care. After navigating public mental health services for 15 years, he graduated as valedictorian in 2010 from Contra Costa County’s Service Provider Individualized Recovery Intensive Training (SPIRIT) program.
Roberto’s duties at OCE include facilitating Social Inclusion meetings and serving as a member of the Mental Health Services Act Consolidated Planning and Advisory Workgroup (CPAW). Roberto represented Contra Costa County as a member of the California Mental Health Services Authority (CalMHSA) Medi-Cal Peer Certification Stakeholder Advisory Council. He has also been a NAMI Contra Costa member since 2008, having in past years presented for In Our Own Voice and facilitated Connection peer support group meetings.
Impact on NAMI CC African American Uplift Program
We shared how this would impact the NAMI CC African American Uplift Program, Contra Costa County’s first African American-centered lived experience non-clinical support program, funded by the PWI (Peer Workforce Investment). We all took a look at current mental health legislation, including the Miles Hall Lifeline Act 988, with a focus on the Governor’s C.A.R.E (Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment) Court, a new policy framework to assist people living with untreated mental health and substance abuse challenges that empowers Californians in crisis to access housing, treatment, and care and provides accountability for individuals and local governments with court orders for services. We left time at the end for a conversational Q&A.