Attachment 1 - PART Rating

Program: Community Mental Health Services Block
Grant

Rating: Adequate
Program Type:

Block/Formula

Agency: Department of Health and Human Services
Bureau: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Purpose

Program Summary:
100

Planning

88

Management

89

Results /
Accountability

25

0

100

Key Performance Measures

Year

Long-term Measure:
Rate of readmission to State psychiatric hospitals (a) within
30 days (b) within 180 days

2000
2008

Target Actual
8.2/18.1
5/15.1

Annual Measure:
Number of SAMHSA-identified, evidence-based practices in
each state and the percentage of service population
coverage for each practice.

Annual Measure:
Rate of consumers/family members reporting positively
about outcomes for (a) adults and (b) children/adolescents.

2000
2005

70/63
73/65

The Community Mental Health Services Block Grant provides funds to states by
formula to support community mental health services for adults with serious
mental illness and children with serious emotional disturbance.
The assessment found:
• The Block Grant is the only federal program that provides funds to every state
to develop a comprehensive, community-based system of care for individuals with
serious mental illness (SMI) and serious emotional disturbance (SED) who are
uninsured or who have no mental health coverage.
• The formula for distributing funds to states does not use prevalence of SMI and
SED. However, state surveys confirm that the Block Grant is serving low-income
individuals with SMI and the maintenance of effort requirement guards against
supplantation.
• As a part of the transition to performance partnerships, the program has
adopted new long-term outcome measures for states to report on in exchange for
additional flexibility. The program does not yet have multiple years of data to
measure pr ogress on all newly-adopted long-term outcomes.
• The program will undergo the first of three consecutive independent evaluation
studies this year.
• The program does not provide a budget presentation that clearly ties the impact
of funding decisions on expected performance. Having new outcome measures in
place will enable the agency to better understand the impact of changes in
funding and make budget decisions based on program performance.
In response to these findings, the Administration:
1. Proposes to fund competitive planning grants to states to more rapidly
facilitate needed changes in the mental health system, in response to the
report from the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.
2. Will continue to work with states to facilitate the transition from the Block
Grant to performance partnerships to provide states additional flexibility in
exchange for program performance.
3. Will develop an efficiency measure and begin collecting data in the next year.
4. Will identify baselines and targets for the number of SAMHSA-identified,
evidence-based practices in each state and the percentage of service
population coverage for each practice.

Program Funding Level (in millions of dollars)
2003 Actual

2004 Estimate

2005 Estimate

437

435

436