Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health Program Start-Up and Technical Assistance

The Montgomery County Recovery Plan allocated $5 million for a county-wide grant program facilitated by the County Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish and/or expand child and adolescent behavioral health services across the County's 22 school districts. HHS in coordination with the County's Recovery Office conducted a non-competitive application process to collect program proposals and supporting data from each County school district. HHS staff analyzed and vetted program proposals, and using the data collected is distributing the $5 million according to a uniform formula supporting these school district programs. 

Reflecting the unprecedented need across the County for increased school-based behavioral health services, this grant program allocates a minimum of $200,000 to each district to ensure new and/or newly expanded behavioral health programs are possible in every district. That base allocation, aggregated across all 21 responding districts, accounts for $4.2 million of the total grant funding. The remaining $800,000 is being distributed across those 21 districts according to data demonstrating the current need in each district. The application process captured behavioral health data in each district. The information included the number of students placed out of the district for behavioral health services, the total number of unhoused students, and the number of youth mobile crisis contacts within school district boundaries. Each district's proportional share of the total in Montgomery County was then applied to the total remaining funds to allocate additional dollars to each district, as shown in the table below.