March 24, 2026 · Community Revitalization Committee · 6,740 words · 7 speakers · 54 segments
The House Community Revitalization Committee to order. Will the clerk please call the roll? Chair Click? Here. Vice Chair Mullins excused. Ranking Member Brewer? Here. Representative Brownlee? Here. Representative Fowler-Arthur? Representative Gross? Excused. Representative Hoops? Excused. Representative Humphrey? Excused. Representative Lawson-Rowe? Here. Representative Newman? Here. Representative Salvo? Here. Representative Swearingen? Excused. Representative Teska? Here. We have a quorum present and we'll proceed as a full committee. The minutes from the previous meeting are on your iPads. Please review the minutes. Are there any questions or objections to the minutes? Without objection, the minutes are approved. Please stand for prayer and for the Pledge of Allegiance. And I will ask Representative Newman to lead us in prayer and Ranking Member Brewer to lead us in the pledge.
As we bow for prayer, Father, we turn our attention to you, the maker of heaven and earth, the king of kings ruler of all things and you have told us to come to your presence in the name of your son jesus to find help and grace in time of need and father looking at your greatness and our lowliness and weakness we find ourselves at all times in need of your grace and help and so father again today we ask that you would give wisdom direction guidance and father you'd give hope and joy in our hearts that we will know light is true light. Truth is truth because of you. We look to you in all things and give you praise today. In Jesus' name, amen.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
You may be seated. I'd like to remind our witnesses that we have a five-minute time limit for testimony. And there will also be time for Q&A if you don't finish your testimony, where you can maybe follow up on some of the things that you missed if your testimony is a little bit longer. I now call on Ann Robertson, you can correct me, Robson, thank you, to provide proponent testimony on House Bill 718.
You may begin when you are ready. Awesome. Good morning. Chair Click, Vice Chair Mullins, Ranking Member Brewer, and members of the House Community Revitalization Committee, Thank you for the opportunity to offer proponent testimony on House Bill 718. This is my first time to do this, so it's an honor to be here. Thank you so much. My name is Ann Robson. I'm a licensed professional clinical counselor, and I'm also the chief program officer for Red Oak Behavioral Health in Akron, Ohio. Red Oak provides primarily school-based prevention and treatment services to young people across 21 school districts in five different counties. Just to give an example of the workforce surge we've had, in 2018, Red Oak served just over 3,500 individuals. In 2023, we were asked to serve 11,400. That's a 225% increase. I support the bill, House Bill 718, for the expansion of the role of the non-licensed mental health provider to help fill this demand. Creating the Qualified Mental Health Credential addresses Ohio's workforce shortage by creating new pathways into the mental health field. This entry-level credential is complementary to existing behavioral health professional licensure, offering non-degree and degree opportunities for people to get into the behavioral health field without having to go through a master's level and licensed credential. I'd like to take a moment and tell you how the expansion of workforce development opportunities helped Red Oak serve more people and young treatment. We did this last summer. We partnered with Lorain County Community College to create a comprehensive training program that met the core skills and competencies established by the QMH credential. We trained 62 non-licensed mental health providers in five areas. Our goal was to increase capacity of those providing care who don't have a formal master's degree and ultimately increased the number of youth and people we served by 1,000. That was our goal. We wanted to increase by 1,000 kids. Well, we exceeded our goal to almost 1,500 kids we served in 2025. Our comprehensive evaluation data from the participants showed strong engagement and increase in provider knowledge. And the good news is our staff retention when the program started was at 63% for our QMH, or our case management population, and it currently stands at 81%. So we feel really good about that. The non-licensed providers who went through the training really feel a lot more confidence and competence in delivering mental health services. They all received like a training toolkit, they received textbooks, and they all received a copy of the DSM, which is our Diagnostic Statistical Manual. That way they can take it out to their schools and reference the diagnosis that is rendered so they're not reading things they don't understand. While our case managers do not diagnose, but they are familiar with the diagnostic process, and they can support the treatment plan in a much better way if they understand what the diagnosis is that the therapist rendered. And benefits for families, that's what it's all about, right? Benefits for families. They have benefited from this training that aligns with the QMH credential. Our wait times for the therapeutic process have decreased, and caseloads are smaller now. with an increase in access to consistent care, greater frequency of coordination between schools and families, and they can do all these services at home, in the school, and in the community. So when a referral to a licensed health provider is made, response time is critical. We know that that first 24 hours of callback, if you have the courage to ask for help, we need to respond immediately. Well, with the new staff that we've trained, we have more people to help do that. So the current wait time for an appointment with a licensed professional in Ohio varies. But since expanding our workforce, Red Oaks referrals can be seen within 72 hours. We have a licensed therapist who will diagnose, get that going. Did something happen? Okay. I'm almost done. And then you guys ask me anything you want. But we get them in quicker, and these guys can quickly begin to move on the things that have been identified in the treatment plan. I just ask that you consider supporting House Bill 718 because it really is amazing. I've seen it. I've taught it. I created a program with Lorain County Community College to train and teach these folks. So if you could support this advancement to help other professionals, that would be awesome. Thank you, Chair Click, for giving me time to be here with you today.
Thank you for your testimony. I've heard you in the process for what you've seen. Now they've still got the exact report.
You have a question. Okay.
That's the other chair recognized. Through the crowd.
Through the chair, thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Prior to this training and credentialing program that you created, what was training like for QMHSs?
That's a great question. That's a great question. What was training like before we created this training? It was truly more of an onboarding procedure that most people got, and then a lot of their formal clinical training happened in a small supervision group, which it still does. We're all supervised and they have mentors, but it wasn't done on the large scale. We didn't go over diagnosis. We didn't go over cognitive behavioral therapy. We didn't go with trauma-focused CBT or even trauma-informed care. We didn't go over those things in depth. This past summer, all of our QMH people went through six weeks of training, five days a week, four hours a day to cover all of those topics. Whereas before, we had more on-the-job training, which is awesome and great, but before they even got out there for the next school year, they had a breadth of knowledge they wouldn't have had. It's a great question. Yes, please. So in effect, people who were coming into these case management roles before could have had some training, could have had no training. It was a... The higher level of care of a QMH. because what we're doing, and essentially that we didn't used to, is I'm a licensed counselor, so I would do the diagnosis, and I would hand the case off to a case manager, and they could run with it. As long as it isn't something so serious like a mood disorder or a psychosis disorder, which I would stay on the case, but they can run with it. And frankly, we can hire more folks with a bachelor's degree that are qualified to take this level of course than I can with a master's degree.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ms. Robeson. Honestly, you're doing phenomenal work. My one question to you is, what do you think the benefit of the actual certification is?
Okay, great. That's a great question. Thank you for that. I think the benefit is it really professionalizes what our case managers are going to do. When I first introduced this back in February of 25, at first I thought I heard a collective groan, like what more do you want us to do? But as I explained that this is going to be a professional credential that you're able to use behind your name with different levels. And I can tell you their faces lit up when they heard that the highest level was practitioner. That's a big word, QMH practitioner. I think it adds a level of professionalism, a level of confidence, and it also lets the consumer know these folks have been trained in core areas of mental health by licensed qualified mental health providers that they have gone through the training they have either sat for an exam or they have been grandfathered in due to the previous training Every one of our people also got certificates in what they took, so it's verified that when they were in attendance, what they actually took. So it professionalizes them, gives them a little head up, shoulders back.
Thank you.
Any other questions for the witness? Well, thank you for your very professional and very exciting and energetic testimony. I am. I'm excited about it. I can tell, and we're so glad that you came today to testify in favor of this legislation.
Thank you. It's been an honor.
And I now call on Amy Pulver to provide proponent testimony for House Bill 718. Is Amy here? Okay. I didn't see Amy, so we'll move down the list. And I call on Diane Bricker to provide proponent testimony for House Bill 718. And there is no Diane here this morning. I now call on Teresa Lample to provide. And we have a Teresa. Thank you for being here, Teresa.
I am here.
You may begin with you already.
Well, good morning. Chair Click, Ranking Member Brewer, and members of the House Community Revitalization Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of House Bill 718, which you've heard will support the community behavioral health system, enhance the behavioral health workforce, and strengthen consumer protections and create professional standards. I'm Teresa Lample. I'm CEO of the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health and Family Services Providers. We're a statewide trade and advocacy organization representing over 170 private businesses that deliver behavioral health services, employ nearly 40,000 people, and serve about 2.5 million Ohioans at all stages of their life and in all walks of life. I want to thank the sponsors, Rep Salvo and Rep Brownlee, for their incredible work and stakeholder process to get us to this point. This is an important bill because we know Ohio has a workforce shortage, particularly in behavioral health. It is a math problem. We have more people seeking care than we have people available to provide that care. And what this bill does is offers a common-sense solution that highlights the roles of peers and paraprofessionals through this qualified health credential to be able to expand our workforce and meet more needs of more people. I'm going to talk a little bit about peer support and then the QMH credential, and this is kind of the policy overview for kind of what we're trying to accomplish. But peer recovery support is an effective workforce solution that harnesses the value of lived experience and helping individuals engage in treatment and build skills that support recovery and wellness. Then the QMH credential is a response to Ohio's workforce shortages by establishing a new entry-level credential into the mental health care field that will expand the number of practitioners. This entry-level credential is complementary to existing behavioral health professional licensure by offering non-degree and degree entry-level opportunities. I want to be clear that this initiative does not expand the scope of any mental health practitioner, but rather codifies, standardizes, and clarifies the roles and responsibilities. In talking about the benefits of House Bill 718, I really want to start with quality and safety, because individuals receiving care will be protected by establishing minimum requirements for training and experience in providing basic mental health services and peer recovery supports, kind of through the curriculums that you heard Ann describe. This requires those receiving any of these credentials to practice ethically and under the limited authority, creating accountability and oversight through a professional board. The QMH credential creates a visible and viable career pathway and entry into the mental health sector, incorporating both degree and non-degree pathways immediately following high school, as well as at various entry points across the educational and experience pathways. One of the most important things it does is it opens new opportunities to create career tech programs, apprenticeships, and career development initiatives, particularly below the master's level. That's one of the challenges is most of our workforce requires a master's level, and this creates new opportunities to bring people into the field. It creates efficiencies for businesses in that we're no longer having to train and retrain at that entry-level point. We can do training. We can upskill. We can focus on building the workforce instead of constantly retraining new people coming into the field. It also creates efficiency for the Department of Medicaid who recognizes these practitioners because right now they touch every single one of these applications manually. this would move it into e-license like every other credential. Similar benefits will be for the Department of Behavioral Health for their certification. And then from recruitment and retention, this is about visibility. It's about improved opportunity, and it starts to solve that math problem. It allows for upskilling, and it's stackable with other credentials, including the chemical dependency counselor assistant, which is the credential after which this is modeled. So just a couple seconds or the last minute I have in my time to talk about the oversight and the structure. This bill vests the professional oversight with the Chemical Dependency Professionals Board because they have experience regulating an array of practitioners and a large group of paraprofessionals, particularly through the CDCA that I mentioned. And the QMH credential as we built this model was meant to mirror and replicate that same credential on the mental health side that we already have for individuals providing substance use. This would change the name of the board to the Ohio Behavioral Health Professionals Board to more aptly represent the array of practitioners that would be licensed and certified by the board, and it complements the existing discipline-specific health professional licensing board structure. It also updates the composition of the board itself so that it has the full recognition of those practitioners. And finally, from an implementation standpoint, we know this is new, and it will require a delayed implementation, which we have written into the bill to give us one year to put the regulatory structure in place. The Chemical Dependency Board will be able to create an advisory group for the first year comprised of state agencies and stakeholders to build out the administrative structure and make sure that we're complementing and building a sound quality system. And it also includes that the Department of Medicaid would work with the board to align policy and IT structures so that we can move forward in a smooth crosswalk or transition. So, Chair Click, thank you for the opportunity to testify in support of House Bill 718. This is an important building block for solving our behavioral health workforce. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
Thank you. Are there any questions? Representative Brownlee is recognized for a question.
Through the chair, thank you, and thank you for your testimony. Can you talk a little bit about the makeup of the implementation board and the oversight that will happen for this? And, Chair, if I may, have a separate question after this.
Sure.
So part of what we know is because we're aligning this board with, you know, we're creating a new regulatory structure for paraprofessionals in the mental health space. So we want to make sure that the policy work that we're doing is aligned with the state agencies that oversee and regulate behavioral health. So it has multiple state agencies, the Department of Behavioral Health, the Department of Medicaid, and then the Counselor Social Worker Marriage and Family Therapist Board, and then other system stakeholders as selected by the board director. And we want to make sure that what we're doing is, you know, is focusing on quality. We're focusing on accountability and oversight. And so making sure that the regulatory structure, the education and training is consistent and makes sense and that the supervision requirements, which these practitioners are all supervised, they do not have the ability to diagnose or to authorize a treatment plan. So they're really practice extenders, but making sure that's done in a way that's safe and quality.
Follow up. Through the chair, thank you, and thank you for that answer. The next question is about the agencies that you represent. Can you please explain what they go through when they hire on a case manager, a peer supporter, a QMH, for the first several months while they are waiting for them to be credentialed?
Through the chair to the representative.
So thank you for that question. I think this is one of the areas where we see particularly new people coming in that have no previous experience. When I mentioned the business efficiency, this is one of those areas today. And I think you heard Ms. Robson speak to it, that there's a lot of training and retraining, and sometimes it's just an onboarding process. And so anytime someone comes in new, we have to start from scratch because I, as an organization, each individual organization is responsible for demonstrating the competency of our workforce, particularly this QMH, because they don't have an existing credential. I am the agency saying I believe that you have met the competencies. So that creates a lot of variability. It creates a lot of downtime. And for some of our workforce, we end up losing them because they've already been through this. But we don't recognize their value and experience because they don't have a credential. And in health care, you have to have a credential to practice. That's just kind of the name of the game. Then when it comes to working with the Department of Medicaid, if they're not in the system, there is a delay because it's a manual process. of reviewing and getting it through and kind of waiting. And so it can take weeks and months to get somebody through that process.
Follow-up? Through the chair, thank you. And with those weeks and months that it may take, are agencies being paid for the work that that QMH is providing while they're waiting for this credentialing process to happen?
Through the chair to the representative, no.
Until they get through the credentialing process, they're not eligible to be paid for the services that they provide. So it does create a hardship on the organizations, and it creates some of the challenges we have with recruitment and retention and why when there is turnover it is extremely costly because there is this retraining process to backfill positions.
Are there any other questions for the witness?
Can you just tell me in general, how does this help the patient, the average client? How is this providing better services for them So I think that goes back to my first point about the benefits of this particular legislation is that this is about quality and safety You know we don like
to think that there's bad things that happens when people are providing care, but sometimes they do. Today, there's no oversight or accountability other than through each individual organization. When we create a credential, we create that patient protection. We create some place that a person can issue a complaint and it can be investigated and appropriate action taken if there is unethical or other behavior that is not consistent with what we would anticipate. From a quality perspective, I think what you heard Ms. Robson talk about is the training. We're elevating the standard and the quality, and what this legislation will do is create a framework that standardizes what training a person has to have. It's not dependent on each agency. to decide what they think means good quality, it creates a standard. And that, we think, will then elevate it. It also recognizes individuals that have associate's degrees or bachelor's degrees in behavioral health spaces that today can't be licensed. So we're also bringing them in and capturing them so that we're not losing those people who want to be helpers and who got degrees in helping professions, only to find out in our current structure they can't get a license. And so this also expands that workforce, and we keep as many of those folks who want to work in mental health in our field, which then means there's more access. And I can't think of anything that benefits consumers more than when they need help, there's a person available to help them.
Has it been your experience that some agencies are hiring or putting unqualified people in place due to the lack of credentialing?
So to the chair, I think that we have such variability, and that's one of the challenges. I don't know that I would go as far as to say they're unqualified, but we have different levels of quality, and I think that is a challenge that we want to, you know, as an industry, address up front and say, you know, we value quality and we value consistency, and we value that standardization because then it is likely that the people receiving care get a better experience and a more consistent experience when they access care. Thank you.
Are there any other questions for the witness? Thank you so much for your testimony today. The chair now calls on Teresa Lample. That was, oh, I turned the page back the wrong way. My fault. It's early in the morning. I still haven't had much of this yet. So if you will pardon me. Now I call on Randy Lighty to provide proponent testimony for House Bill 718. Thank you, Randy, for being here, and you may begin when you are ready. Thank you.
I, too, am coffeeless, so bear with me. Chair Click, Ranking Member Brewer, members of the committee, I, too, would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide proponent testimony today. My name is Randy Leite. I'm executive director of the Appalachian Children Coalition. The coalition is a regional multi-sector partnership working across Ohio's 32 Appalachian counties to improve child health, strengthen families, build the systems and workforce necessary to support long-term well-being. I'm here today in strong support of House Bill 718 because it directly addresses perhaps the most urgent challenge in our region and in the state. And that's the critical shortage of behavioral health professionals serving children, youth, and families. In Appalachian, Ohio, we see every day how workforce shortages in mental health and substance use services impact children and families. Schools struggle to connect students to care. Families face long wait times, often days, or must travel significant distance to receive care, and providers are stretched beyond their capacity. At the same time, we know that early access to behavioral health supports is essential for improving academic success, reducing crisis situations, and supporting healthy development. Without a strong workforce, even the best designed systems cannot meet the need. House Bill 718 takes a thoughtful and strategic approach to strengthening Ohio's behavioral health workforce in two important ways. First, peer recovery support is one of the most effective and promising strategies we have for engaging individuals and families in care. These are individuals with lived experience who bring credibility, trust, and connection to the people they serve. By transitioning credentialing to professional board, this legislation will strengthen quality oversight and accountability, will elevate the role of peers as recognized part of the workforce, and will support recruitment and retention of individuals who are uniquely positioned to help others. In rural communities like those in Appalachia, where relationships and trust matter deeply, peer support is not just helpful, it is essential. Equally important, House Bill 718 creates new qualified mental health credentials that establish clear, accessible entry points into the behavioral health workforce. Simply put, this is a game changer for regions like Appalachian, Ohio. These credentials will create career pathways for both degree and non-degree individuals. They'll allow students to enter the workforce directly out of high school or through career tech programs. And they'll support apprenticeships and grow your own workforce strategies. Strategies will help people from communities stay in communities to support their neighbors in those communities. And they'll provide portable, stackable credentials that encourage long-term career advancement. At the Appalachian Children Coalition, we're actively building workforce pipelines through initiatives like school-based health networks, youth career exploration opportunities, and regional workforce collaboratives. The qualified mental health credential aligns perfectly with these efforts by creating the missing middle in the workforce ladder between entry-level interests and advanced licensure. From our perspective, Health Bill 718 is not just a workforce bill. It's a child well-being and community health bill. By strengthening the behavioral health workforce, this legislation will improve access to care for children and families, especially in underserved rural areas, support early intervention, reducing the need for more intensive services later, enhance school-based and community-based care models, and strengthen the continuum of care across systems. For Appalachian, Ohio, where we are working to build a more coordinated and accessible system of care, this legislation provides a critical foundation for long-term success. In closing, House Bill 718 represents a practical, forward-thinking solution to one of Ohio's most pressing challenges. It strengthens quality, expands opportunity, and builds the workforce needed to support healthier children, stronger families, and more resilient communities. On behalf of the Appalachian Children Coalition and the communities we serve, I respectfully urge your support for House Bill 718. Thank you again for the opportunity to provide testimony, and I'll be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you for your testimony, Mr. Lainey. Are there any questions? Representative Bradley is recognized for a question.
Through the chair, thank you, and thank you for your testimony. You may or may not have this number, so I'm going to ask you a two-part question. but how many licensed therapists and mental health professionals are serving Appalachia? And the second part of that is when people, you know, there's been a long history of stigma for accessing mental health care. How does that look in your region? Are people much more likely to work with somebody that they know, like a peer or QMHS who's from their own community, versus even, you know, I know that it's accessible, more accessible now with online health care, but are they involving themselves in that? Are they accessing it, willing to do so?
Yes. Yes. To your first question, while I don't have the number currently serving it right off the top of my head, I can tell you a few years ago we endeavored to determine how many unfilled positions there were in the Appalachian region. And through, admittedly, some flawed and too narrow research, we were able to document over 1,000 unfilled positions for credentialed behavioral health specialists. And again, because the research is flawed, I know that number is way smaller than what's really out there. So certainly the need remains there. I should also mention I previously served as dean of the College of Health Sciences at Ohio University, and we had a social work program. The other challenge we found, 90% of the students who came out of our program didn't stay in the region. They went away to work, right? And what I like about and what I think is a real advantage to these credentials is they appeal to people who grew up in the region and who are more likely to stay in the region. And so I think they offer some pathways to addressing a number of the places where there's a challenge to get a fully credentialed, master-degree person to come work. In terms of stigma, we work with children. That is a huge, huge issue. There are many, many children who struggle with depression, with substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, who are just ashamed and don't seek the help they need. We do a lot of work with youth-led prevention programs right now because we do find kids especially are more likely to talk to their peers than somebody from outside. And so to have people with the credentials who can be embedded at a school and a community and can connect with kids at a level that they feel comfortable talking to them, I think is not just beneficial. I think it's absolutely critical. So, yeah.
Anything else Follow You mentioned peer recovery supports in your testimony Can you talk to me about the value of peer recovery support and how this bill addresses that
I think the value in peer recovery support is the fact that you are helping somebody with somebody who's had the lived experience, right? And so to the point of stigma, for somebody to talk to somebody who's gone through the same struggles they have, they're more likely to reach out and feel less stigma in doing that. I think those who have that lived experience also bring an understanding to the relationship that those without experience can't bring. Way back when, I was trained as a marriage and family therapist, and admittedly, it was not a good one, but I tried. But I would work with people who were going through things, and I could cognitively talk to them, but I didn't understand emotionally what they'd experienced, right? So I think the peer recovery, that brings in the opportunity for a different level of connection that I think opens any number of therapeutic doors that are difficult to get open.
Are there any other questions for the witness? Seeing none, thank you so much for your testimony today.
Thank you.
I now call on Mary Bone Subpoena to provide proponent testimony for HB 718. Okay. She is not here. Now call on Samantha Schaefer to provide proponent testimony for House Bill 718. Thank you. You may begin when you are ready.
All right. Chair Click, Ranking Member Brewer, and members of the committee, thank you so much for the opportunity to give testimony today on House Bill 718. My name is Samantha Schaefer, and I serve as the CEO of Integrated Services for Behavioral Health. Our organization provides community-based behavioral health, substance use disorder treatment, and housing services across Ohio, with a significant footprint in southeast in the Appalachian region of Ohio. I'm here today to express our strong support for House Bill 718 and the critical role it will play in strengthening Ohio's behavioral health workforce and improving access to care. Ohio is facing a well-documented and growing demand for mental health and substance use disorder services paired with a significant workforce shortage. These challenges are especially acute in rural and Appalachian communities, where geographic barriers and transportation challenges paired with provider scarcity compound already unmet needs. In our part of the state, we firsthand know how workforce limitations directly impact access to timely, high-quality care. This can manifest in long wait times to receive needed services and an over-reliance on emergency rooms and other crisis response systems. This dynamic adds stress and expense for families, communities, and taxpayers. House Bill 718 offers a thoughtful and practical response to these challenges. The creation of qualified mental health specialist credentials establishes a much-needed entry point into the behavioral health field. For organizations like ours, this legislation will have a significant impact on our existing paraprofessional workforce, and especially our qualified mental health specialists. At our organization, we employ nearly 300 qualified mental health specialists and have long believed that professionals with appropriate training and support can change the lives of those they serve. These individuals are on the front lines every day supporting Ohioans with complex mental health needs. They build relationships, help build skills and navigate systems, and provide critical support that enables recovery and stability. Many of our team doing this work are individuals who have their own story of resilience related to their lived experience with mental health and or substance use. They come to us with a deep commitment and understanding of their hometowns and an earnest desire to give back and help guide others along a similar path of recovery. Despite the essential nature of their work, many QMHS professionals currently have no formal route to obtain a recognized credential, even after years of experience, training, and investment in their careers. House Bill 718 would change that. It would provide long overdue formal recognition for a workforce that is already doing incredibly difficult and meaningful work across our communities. Additionally, this credential framework helps establish a clear and accessible career pathway. QMHS roles often serve as a pipeline into the broader behavioral health profession, and this legislation strengthens that pipeline while also acknowledging that many individuals will build long-term meaningful careers within these particular roles. By creating a tiered portable credential, House Bill 718 supports both entry into the field and long-term retention. Equally important, this effort will standardize quality, training, and compliance across this system. By establishing consistent expectations for education, supervision, and scope of practice, we can better protect the public and ensure a high standard of care for individuals receiving services. This kind of structure is especially important in underserved regions, where variability in training and resources can be more pronounced. In Southeastern Ohio, this legislation is especially critical, and not only helps expand access to care by responsibly broadening the workforce, but it also provides dignity and recognition to individuals who have long been essential to our system without formal acknowledgement. With appropriate training and supervision, we believe this workforce can continue to make a meaningful and measurable difference in the lives of people struggling with mental health challenges. In closing, Integrated Services for Behavioral Health strongly supports House Bill 718. We believe this legislation represents a balanced and forward-thinking approach to addressing workforce shortages, improving quality and accountability, and expanding access to care, especially in rural and Appalachian communities. Thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony, and I respectfully ask for your support for House Bill 718. Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony. Are there any questions for the witness? Representative Brownlee has acknowledged her question.
Through the chair, thank you. Thank you for that testimony. And I wanted to touch upon, I know you didn't specifically mention it, but I know you have experience in how this does not change the scope of practice and just give an overall sense of how licensed, currently licensed therapists work with QMH providers and peer supporters for a very holistic approach to providing mental health care to Ohioans.
Yeah, sure. Through the chair to the representative. So anybody that we're serving across our region first interacts with a licensed individual who does a thorough assessment to understand what the appropriate diagnosis is, and then we move into care planning, which can be done by someone who is unlicensed but is signed off on by people within our team that have a license. So there's someone reviewing those care plans to make sure that they're medically necessary, to make sure that we're on the right track from a therapeutic standpoint, And then there's constant opportunity for supervision and consultation for anyone doing this work across the region.
Follow-up. And if needed, through the chair, thank you, and if needed, you know, if a QMH provider realizes that a client needs more than the care that they can provide, what options do they have in integrating that health care?
Through the chair to the representative, thank you.
That's a great question. And that happens. There are times when we're working with individuals that have really chronic conditions that are complicated by acute episodes of care, where they may be looking at hospitalization, where we're looking at things like suicidal ideation, where a person who is not fully trained would then have immediate access to a supervisor to talk about what do we need to do from this point to make sure that that person is safe and stabilized. And the goal is always to get that person stabilized enough so that they can kind of return to a maintenance and someone providing care like a QMHS. But we oftentimes are expediting people into psychiatry, expediting people into crisis services. And so there's always the ability to adjust the level of care that's needed depending on what that person is experiencing at that time.
Are there any other questions for the witness? Well, Ms. Schaefer, I think you and your colleagues have made a strong case for this legislation today, and I want to thank you for that. I just have a more broad question that maybe you can answer, or maybe you can't. I bet you can. And that is just the current state of mental health in Ohio, especially in the realm of substance abuse recovery. Can you tell, is that, are we making progress? Is that getting worse? Is there greater need, lesser need? Are we stable?
what is that what is the condition in the state of Ohio? I mean I won't be able to provide statistics necessarily but broadly I think you know the thing that we can be really proud of as a state is that we have seen less people dying and I mean I think just as we start as people that care about each other and our neighbors and the people that live in our communities I think we should all be proud of that. You know as a person that is trying to take care we serve 24 counties across in Ohio, there is still a great need, right? The fact that we've reduced the amount of people dying from substance use or mental health conditions is something that is a positive, but I think that all of us in the room would like to say that we're not losing people to overdose deaths, period. And so as an employer who's trying to bring people into this field to get people to stay in the field doing with us, we still have some work to do is what I would say. So we've made a lot of progress, but we're not there yet. We're not there yet, sir.
Very good. Thank you so much for your testimony today. Are there any other witnesses that would like to provide testimony on House Bill 718 today? Okay, seeing none. This concludes the second hearing on House Bill 718. Is there any further business to be brought before the committee today? Seeing none, the committee stands adjourned. Thank you.