Upstate Caring Partner’s CHBS works toward state designation

UTICA, N.Y. — Upstate Caring Partner’s Community Health and Behavioral Services (CHBS) has received $265,000 in startup funding from the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and Office of Addiction Supports and Services (OASAS) to become a New York State-designated certified community behavioral health clinic (CCBHC).

The award is one of 13 distributed statewide and allows CHBS to move forward in its integrated behavioral-health system of care model.

“As a CCBHC, we will be able to sustain the model that we have implemented in the past three years through grant funding,” says Jenni Barlow-Gagnon, executive VP of behavioral-health services at Upstate Caring Partners. “We will be able to continue the work past grant funding,” making it a sustainable model.

The model includes an integrated person-centered approach to care, recognizing all the factors that can contribute to health including primary care and even barriers to treatment. 

“It’s so important to really look at each of those components of health,” Barlow-Gagnon says of the whole person approach to care. That includes targeted case management that ensures services between CHBS visits. CHBS provides individual counseling, psychiatric services, group-therapy, peer-support specialists, relationship counseling, play therapy, behavioral-health navigation, and substance-use-disorder services to patients of all ages.

CHBS moved to the new Giotto Center Community Health and Behavioral Services facility last May, bringing all services together under one roof at 1002 Oswego St. in Utica. Formerly, CHBS was divided between three different locations.

The Giotto Center is next door to Upstate Family Health Center, a partner of Upstate Caring Partners that provides primary and pharmacy care, ensuring patients receive all the care they need.

To achieve the designation as a CCBHC, the organization must demonstrate that it’s meeting all the standards of its care model.

“We’ll have to go through a rigorous process,” Barlow-Gagnon says, including site visits, workflow evaluations, and reviews of policies.

CHBS hopes to complete the designation process by July 1.

Community Behavioral and Health Services is part of Upstate Caring Partners, which provides an array of services including early intervention, pre-school, the Tradewinds Education Center for students ages 5 to 21 with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities, residential programs for those unable to live at home, respite/self-direction/community/day habilitation programs to provide relief to caregivers, employment/vocational services, and the Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities assistive-technology program.

Upstate Caring Partners operates 74 locations, including a second CHBS site at 207 W. Dominick St. in Rome. It employs more than 1,600 people and serves more than 7,000 individuals annually.