AUGUSTA  — Maine health officials have launched a new online tool where residents can learn more about the federal health care reform law passed earlier this year.

The Governor's Office of Health Policy and Finance says the website provides up-to-date information about the Affordable Care Act and how it affects Maine.

The site, www.maine.gov/healthreform, includes a summary of the law and links to federal and state agencies, the Maine Legislature's Joint Select Committee on Health Reform and other information sources.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and George Washington University’s School of Public Health have recently created a web site that is tracking issues related to Health Care Reform Implementation.  The site can be found here: http://www.healthreformgps.org/.

Supported Housing. Supported housing is an evidence-based practice that links decent, permanent housing to flexible support services that are provided in a person’s home and in community settings. The program provides access to scattered site apartments or other housing options typical for a given community, made affordable through rental subsidies. Support services are provided in a flexible and individualized manner. Both team-based and individual case management models have been tested and proven effective.

The services provided in such a program are complex. They can include practical assistance with daily living, direct skills teaching, supportive counseling, wellness supports and illness self-management, harm reduction, money management, medication monitoring, community services navigation and connection to resources, attention to social network, leisure activities, peer support, and (often) crisis assistance.

Team-based approaches may include clinical services (psychiatry and mental health nursing), supported employment or education, services for co-occurring disorders, and peer specialists. Housing supports usually include move-in assistance, rent, and (sometimes) utility subsidies, basic housekeeping materials, and assistance with personal furnishing and decorating.

Supported housing has been found to support clinical stability, turnaround to recovery, and community integration. Permanent supported housing vastly reduces street homelessness for persons who are chronically homeless and reduces shelter stays. Thus the program has become a mainstay or primary solution in efforts to reduce or end homelessness, both nationwide and abroad.

For, example, Pathways to Housing—“Housing First”—provides scattered site rental housing and a modified Assertive Community Treatment team approach for persons with prolonged psychiatric disorder and chronic homelessness. The program has no preconditions of sobriety nor does it demand compliance with treatment, yet it achieves success rates approaching 90 percent over a 5-year period.

The costs of supported housing are modest and more cost effective when compared with institutions, jails, shelters, or inpatient costs. Indeed, studies have shown that the costs of supported housing services are largely mitigated by savings in delivering satisfactory services or actually saving money over time, while increasing the quality of life both for participants and for the community as a whole.

SAMHSA has recently released a resource toolkit for permanent supportive housing. These materials include training materials and fidelity criteria.
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