Rehabilitation and Educational Services, Inc. (RESI), a 501(c)(3) affiliate of RCPA, has been awarded a $40,000 grant from Moses Taylor Foundation (MTF) for a project that will help provide a better understanding of clients’ experiences in co-occurring substance use and mental health treatment.
By exploring the treatment experience, the project, “Client Experience in Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment: A Statewide Inventory,” will provide a powerful tool for evidence- based advocacy. Using one-on-one interviews and journey mapping with clients currently in treatment for co-occurring mental health and substance use, the RESI team will capture, for example, clients’ experiences with counselor rapport, facility safety, treatment protocols, regulatory requirements, and care coordination. Ultimately, the project will reveal the granular reality of the treatment experience from the client perspective by identifying specific elements that help a client feel motivated to remain in treatment while examining barriers to treatment entry and retention.
MTF’s mission is to improve the health of people in Northeastern Pennsylvania, ensuing equitable access to high-quality health care services through a whole-person approach that includes primary care, oral health, and mental health services. RESI will undertake its study in support of the Foundation’s Health Care Access and Quality focus area.
Although MTF’s work is focused on an 11-county northeast region of Pennsylvania, RESI intends to conduct this project not only regionally but across the state as well. As such, RESI is continuing to seek additional funding partners statewide.
RESI’s mission is to improve the delivery of services to vulnerable and underserved individuals through research and education of providers, policymakers, lawmakers, the public, and the individuals receiving services through these systems. RESI will achieve its mission predominantly through research-based initiatives, publishing and disseminating its findings to key stakeholders to improve service delivery in multiple ways and at multiple levels.
“We are extremely grateful to Moses Taylor Foundation for this funding and proud to be part of such a distinguished group of grantees advancing the Foundation’s mission over the past 14 years,” said RESI Executive Director Jason Snyder. “As MTF supports efforts to expand access to and increase the availability of behavioral health services in the northeast, it's important to remember that the SUD treatment system in Pennsylvania has been redesigned over the last several years to be capable of treating both SUD and mental health, an effort that should have expanded mental health treatment capabilities and capacity. One critical question from the clients' perspective, then, is whether the system has truly been enabled to adequately address mental health and SUD. With MTF’s support, we intend to help answer this question.”
