Project Overview
The Transformational Change Partnership (TCP) is an innovative cohort program that uses a structured learning and capacity-building framework to empower teams in California to transform their behavioral health systems and improve outcomes. The program aligns with the state’s Behavioral Health Services Act (BHSA), which emphasizes improving access to care, reducing disparities, and fostering systemic integration across health, housing, criminal justice, and other sectors. Third Sector co-created TCP with the University of the Pacific.
In order to achieve a future where all people are able to achieve well-being, no matter their race, background, or circumstance, we must move beyond traditional public mental health services that work in silos toward more integrated and proactive approaches that address mental health from various angles. To realize this shift, behavioral health departments have to develop the internal capacity to listen to communities and implement transformative change in partnership with the people they serve.
In 2024, amendments to California's Mental Health Services Act (now the Behavioral Health Services Act) emphasized improving access to care, reducing disparities, tracking outcomes, and fostering systemic integration across health, housing, criminal justice, and other sectors. Hundreds of behavioral health staff would now have to implement major policy initiatives that required them to redirect existing funding to deliver a reconfigured set of behavioral health services while working collaboratively with new agency partners.
The Transformational Change Partnership was developed to provide county health and human services teams and their partners with knowledge, learning experiences, and implementation support to achieve transformative system change as envisioned by the BHSA. The Partnership is designed to help county agencies successfully implement the numerous current state initiatives and reforms in ways that improve operations, relationships with community partners, and client and community results. It emphasizes human-centered design, community engagement, and a focus on outcomes as essential to developing preventative, comprehensive, cost-effective care that improves lives and reduces disparities. The Partnership is a collaborative endeavor of the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, Third Sector, the California Institute for Behavioral Health Solutions, the Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, and the Steinberg Institute.
In the summer of 2023, Third Sector and the University of Pacific's McGeorge School of Law partnered to establish the Transformational Change Partnership. They developed the fellowship curriculum and selected two county behavioral health teams to be part of the pilot cohort to co-design, test, assess, and refine the program's training elements. Each team comprised behavioral health agency staff, including clinicians, program directors, and agency directors. Each team focused on an issue of current or near-term importance in their system that is preventing them from more effectively serving their communities. TCP Cohorts complete the "change progression," representing stages in the fellowship where cohort members develop and implement change work plans while acquiring critical skills needed for successful implementation and sustainability. The progressions and how they connect to each category of change building block are outlined in Figure 1 to the right.
In the First Progression, county teams assess the current system and design improvement projects to meet community needs. Participants learn skills focused on setting strategic direction and strengthening their capacity to build meaningful community relationships, including human-centered design, root cause analysis, and project management.
In the Second Progression, teams implement their projects, build organizational capacity, and manage challenges. In this progression, participants learn by doing, building skills focused on overcoming resistance, change management, system co-production, and piloting and testing new programs to improve outcomes.
In the Third Progression, teams refine their projects and scale successes to other areas, focusing on continuous improvement and innovation.
After the program, each team will have deepened its data- and community-based skills and strategies to implement service delivery improvements that create lasting change for the people they serve. In the TCP program evaluation, participants across the first two cohorts demonstrated growth across all 10 change building blocks. County teams also report that they continue collaborating with their cross-sector teams to facilitate continued implementation and sustainability of their improvement projects.
Behavioral Health
| Project Name | Scope | Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incorporating Consumer Voice in Outcomes Design & System Improvements | County | CA | Active |
| Sutter-Yuba’s iCARE Innovation Project seeks to increase access to behavioral health care for underserved groups not currently engaged in traditional behavioral health services. Third Sector is supporting outcomes framework design and outcomes impact assessment for iCARE by soliciting and integrating input from consumers to both inform continuous improvement efforts and contribute to consumer-defined recovery metrics. | |||
| Designing Outcomes-Focused Mental Health Services in Los Angeles County | County | CA | Closed |
| Third Sector partnered with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH) to transform approximately $300 million in service provider contracts, creating the nation's largest system of outcomes-focused mental health provider contracts. This multiyear, data-driven process focused on LACDMH's Full Service Partnership program, which supports a "whatever it takes" approach to caring for individuals with the most challenging mental health needs. As a result, LACDMH was able to deliver better outcomes for the more than 15,000 clients they serve each day. | |||
