Regional Partnerships have been developed based on the geographic
regions as designated by the California Mental Health Directors
Association. As discussed previously, CMHDA uses five geographic
regions of California for planning purposes. For Regional
Partnership purposes, county mental health directors in some
regions decided to form sub-regions.
These sub-regions were developed to reflect the following
planning factors:
Geography, distance, and travel between counties.
Number and location of educational institutions.
Population density of counties.
Existing collaborative efforts among counties, between
counties and educational institutions, and with other health or
educational organizations.
Become Familiar with the Guidelines: Information Notice 08-2
Here are some suggested ideas and tools to help develop a
Regional Partnership. Activities need to support the strategies
and requirements in DMH Information Notice 08-20.
Once the application has been completed for DMH, here are some
suggestions to assist with planning. Included here are
questions taken from the Regional Partnership County Interview
Guide on the DMH WET webpage to help think through next the
steps, including who needs to be included in our planning. By
interviewing county staff and others you will also get a sense of
county culture and potential sources of conflict within the
region. This will be helpful as regional projects are
developed.
One of the MHSA Essential Elements is Community Collaboration.
Collaboration is critical to the success and outcome of Regional
Partnerships. As the Regional Partnership develops it is
recommended to form some type of leadership structure or Steering
Committee that helps support the work in the community. There is
no requirement in the guidelines to do so, however, based on the
experiences of the Collaborative, this may be a useful way for
the Regional Partnership to add to the county mental health
perspective to include other partners: education, consumers,
family members, etc
Once the coordinator is more familiar with the workforce
development needs in the community, a suggested next step is to
organize a larger meeting with local community partners and
stakeholders.
