Following decades of an over-reliance on inpatient care, Virginia is working to rebalance its behavioral health system to build more community capacity and crisis care. A transformed crisis care system will lead to better outcomes for people with mental illness—reducing unnecessary hospitalizations, decreasing interactions with the criminal justice system, and improving overall well-being. A key priority of Governor Youngkin’s Right Help, Right Now plan to transform Virginia’s behavioral health system is a significant build out of the crisis system to ensure all Virginians have 1) Someone to Talk to, 2) Someone to Respond, and 3) A Place to Go.

Through Right Help, Right Now, Virginia is continuing to transform its crisis system into a fully integrated, statewide continuum of services based on the Crisis Now Model, which offers a proven, innovative framework, focused on providing the right help at the right time through a call center, mobile crisis teams, community-based crisis centers and other non-hospital alternatives. This model has been shown to improve outcomes by preventing escalation of symptoms, diverting unnecessary hospitalizations and incarcerations, reducing involvement with law enforcement, facilitating access to treatment, and ultimately improving overall mental health stability by providing timely intervention and stabilization during a crisis.

As a result, the Commonwealth is building a comprehensive crisis system and ensuring Virginians have Someone to Talk to through the 988 call centers, Someone to Respond through mobile crisis teams, and a Place to Go through building crisis centers across the Commonwealth. All Virginians will be able to access high quality behavioral health services aimed at managing symptoms before they become crisis-level and avoiding expensive, restrictive in-patient services or possible incarceration. This initiative calls for a stronger crisis system that meets the needs of youth and adults in their communities, supporting them in the least restrictive environment where they can safely and successfully live. The graphic on page 3 highlights major components of Virginia’s Comprehensive Crisis System.

Thanks to a collaboration with the General Assembly, the crisis transformation under Right Help, Right Now has seen tremendous progress. Major project status as of November 2024 includes:

• In September 2024, 988 in Virginia received over 14,600 calls, which is 148 percent more calls than last year at this time.

• Virginia currently has 102 mobile crisis teams statewide and logged over 16,000 dispatches so far this year.

• The goal of ensuring a mobile crisis team can respond to any Virginian in an hour or less has been exceeded and is currently under 50 minutes.

• There are now have 329 active community crisis center beds and chairs throughout Virginia, and there are 334 more currently in development.

• The numbers of youth CRCs [Crisis Receiving Centers] and CSUs [Crisis Stabilization Units] are also increasing, with 46 active beds and chairs and 55 more in development.

This report provides additional details on how funds appropriated in the FY23 and FY24 will impact crisis transformation in Virginia.