InnROADs

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2020

San Bernardino County is committed to systematically addressing the issue of homelessness and the lack of services sought out by individuals who are homeless due to their mental illness as well as other barriers. For San Bernardino County, the issue of homelessness in our communities has become a priority issue as the rate of homelessness has increased specifically in the unsheltered category. These concerns have resulted in the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health (DBH), in collaboration with community partners and fellow County agencies, creating an innovative project to identify and test more effective means of outreach, engagement, and treatment within the County’s homeless communities called the Innovative Remote Onsite Assistance Delivery (InnROADs) project. This project seeks to effect system-wide transformative change by utilizing lessons learned from previous innovation projects to craft a modified model of engagement for those individuals who are experiencing homelessness in the County’s rural and unincorporated communities. The focus of the project is to create an intensive, field-based engagement model that supports mult-idisciplinary/multi-agency teams that meet, engage, and provide treatment to youth, adults, and families experiencing homelessness where they live and are comfortable within homeless communities. This project seeks to disrupt the existing model of engagement and treatment that requires individuals to “come to” services and supports in favor of the creation of a system where the needed services and supports “go to” the individual in need, no matter where they are located within San Bernardino County. When working with these communities, the goal is to begin engagement with the necessary services needed to increase health, reduce risks to health and safety, and transition these individuals from the streets into housing.