White House Sees Role for Service Coordinators in Mental Health Strategy

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Bobbie Guidry

The White House’s strategy to address the national mental health crisis, outlined on March 1 in a fact sheet and formally announced during President Biden's March 2 State of the Union speech, includes training HUD service coordinators, housing counselors, and fair housing grantee staff to be equipped to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental illness and addiction among those they serve. HUD will train staff in these roles to recognize the signs of emotional distress and connect residents with mental health resources.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will train people in these roles to recognize the signs of emotional distress and connect residents with mental health resources. During a HUD stakeholder call on March 3, White House Senior Policy Advisor Dr. Sejal Hathi and HUD Senior Advisor Dr. Richard Cho told LeadingAge that the training for Service Coordinators would leverage existing evidence-based mental health programming, including "Mental Health First Aid" courses that are built around assessing, listening, reassuring, and encouraging self-help or professional assistance. Administration staff also discussed how HUD is planning to cover the cost of the training without requiring it to be paid out of the Service Coordinator budget. 

In LeadingAge’s most recent quarterly survey of our affordable senior housing provider members, completed in Dec. 2021, resident mental health issues came ahead of every other available response, including staffing, funding, inspections, compliance, staffing, vaccine mandates, vacancy issues, fair housing issues, and disaster preparedness, when providers were asked what they anticipate as the top operational challenge in the next three months. LeadingAge looks forward to working with HUD and others on bringing more mental health resources to aging services providers.