Service Principles

Community Mental Health Services Act

Programs for Persons with Handicaps

Access

Have ready and prompt access to necessary screening, diagnosis, and treatment.

Make services available at time and locations that enable residents of the provider's service area to readily obtain services.

Client Rights

Be informed of all their rights, including the right to confidentiality and to treatment with dignity.

Ensure each client's right to confidentiality and treatment with dignity.

Qualified Staff

Be provided services by trained competent staff who are sensitive to cultural and social differences.

Establish staffing patterns that reflect the cultural, linguistic, and other social characteristics of the community, and which incorporate multidisciplinary professional staff to meet client functional levels and diagnostic and treatment needs.

Treatment Planning

Clients to be informed of and encouraged to participate in planning, delivering, and evaluating their treatment services; receive services designed to maximize individual potential and minimize institutionalization.

Promote client and family participation in formulating, delivering, and evaluating treatment and rehabilitation; design treatment and habilitation to maximize individual potential and minimize institutionalization.

Least Restrictive Setting

Be treated in the least restrictive environment as close to home as possible.

Provide services in the least restrictive setting, enabling a person to live as normally as possible within the limitations of the handicap.