First Access Behavioral Health

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“Chemline, a polyurethane and polyurea formulations manufacturer, has a strong commitment to giving back to the local community. Through its chemline cares initiative, corporate pledges are donated to selected charities through a team-driven effort that embodies their collective spirit of generosity and community involvement. Each member of the chemline cares team champions a charity that is close to their heart, buiding and supporting the charity's nees through a dedicated partnership. In september 2024 chemline cares reached out to first access behavioral health with a desire to fund the organization to further support it's mission to deliver evidence-based services and education to first responders. Members of the chemline team hand-picked first access behaviroal healt due to their first-hand knowledge of the impact of the organization's work. This 31,000 grant provided 258 hours of immediate and barrier free access to specialized therapy services including eye movement desensitization reprocessing, somatic expreiencing processing, brainsportting and neurofeedback. Counseling and crisis intervention are essential to the wellbeing of all first responders, which directly affects them individually, on the job and at home. The fees associated with these services are often too high for the first responder to incur and many departments do not have programs in place that would offset these costs. As a direct result, the first responder does not seek help and falls deeper into despair or ptsd becomes too much to manage and the reults can be devastating. This program provides counseling and crisis intervention, with no financial barriers, for the first responder (and his family) and will include crisis intervention, routine sessions, support groups and ongoing care without time limits. This program includes post-crisis recovery for the first responder and is also in place to serve full departments immediately following critical incidents. Funding comes from fee-for-service visits and grant support from partnering fire departments. More than 25 first responders across missouri were served with this program in 2024.”

“First access behavioral health provides mental health awareness and de- escalatioin training to first responders, including fire departments, ambulance districts and law enforcement agencies to develop their understanding of the signs and symptoms of mental illness and to teach de- escalation techniques that can be utilzed when responding to a mental health crisis. First access behavioral health provides training utilizing the evidence-based programs of mental health first aid and solution-focused brief intervention and will provide resource materials and linkages to community-based mental health agencies for the general population across the state of missouri. The goal of this service is to increase the number of first responders to include law enforcement, emergency medical services or fire departments trained to respond to mental health needs and crisis in the heneral population. As of december 31, 2024, one quarter into year two of the grant, substance abuse and mental health services administration, the agency has trained 763 persons through it's strengthening the mental health culture training program, which well exceeds the three-year project goal of 200 persons served. The majority of the persons trained were career firefighters/paramedics employed through fire departments, ambulance districts and on of missouri's fire training schools. This has been accomplished through building relationsships statewide with first responding agencies and offering a training program that directly relates and responds to their needs and unique situation. During this same time period, respondents reported 1334 persons have been referred to behavioral health services as a result of their increased knowledge of mental health, as a result of the fabh training and 93% of trainees experienced a change in knowledge from pretest to post test.”

“Missouri senate bill 24, now law effective as of august 28, 2023, is officially the missouri first responder mental health initiative act. The law does several major things to expand protections and support for first responders, including telecommunicators (911 dispatchers). First access behavioral health's ceo has been instrumental in supporting the development and implementation of the four key provisions, noted below, through regional education and consultation with lawmakers, first responding agencies and other providers. 1) it ensures first responders have the right to access behavioral and mental health care services, including treatment for ptsd, under certain terms (geographic flexibility, confidentiality, etc). 2) it establishes a first responder behavioral health grant program through which eligible first responders can be reimbursed for behavioral health care expenses, peer support, training and related services. 3) the bill also expands a voluntary "critical illness benefits pool" (previously only for firefighters and cancer victims) to include first responders more broadly (emts, telecommunicators) to cover diagnosable trauma stress events or cumulative post-traumatic stress injuries. 4) there are protections for confidentiality of peer support counseling: communications in peer support sessions are to be confidential, employers can't force someone to participate and there are penalties for advisors who violate confidentiality.”

“Contractual 79,585 0 0 office supplies 11,434 0 0 late fees 13 0 0 continuing education 655 0 0 office supplies 557 0 0 contractual 20,480 0 0 total 112,724 0 0”