Recovery Based Engagement and Support Team

About the Program

Category: Human Services (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

The Recovery Based Engagement Support Team (RBEST) is a voluntary, client-centered program offering community (field-based) services to San Bernardino County residents who had been inappropriately served, underserved, or unserved and suffer from untreated, severe, chronic and persistent mental illness. This includes historically resistant and “invisible” consumers who primarily receive care through their families, but become more vulnerable as care givers age or other challenges arise. RBEST uses a non-clinical approach focusing on the needs and goals of the consumer by providing field-based mobile outreach, engagement, case management services, family education, support and family therapy. The purpose of RBEST is to increase the quality of services by fostering and developing trust with individuals, their families, and/or current support systems in an effort to activate individuals in the community into needed psychiatric care. RBEST deploys mobile teams throughout the County to engage consumers in the least intrusive, restrictive, and disruptive way in order to promote resiliency and recovery while linking them to appropriate services. RBEST empowers families and caretakers to continue providing care for their mentally ill loved ones in their community-based environment; and has shown a reduction in the frequency of mental health related emergency room visits and unnecessary psychiatric hospitalizations.