Local Interagency Planning Teams
In Georgia, like elsewhere, coordination of mental and behavioral health service for youth and families has been a challenge at the local level due to lack of access and availability to providers and services. The system of care approach was introduced in Georgia to increase multiagency collaboration, decrease service duplication, and strengthen partnerships with families of youth with behavioral health challenges.
Mindworks Georgia, housed at the Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health & Wellbeing within the Georgia Health Policy Center, supports Georgia’s behavioral health system of care at the county level through Local Interagency Planning Teams (LIPTs). LIPTs were established in the 1990s through Georgia Code 49-5-225 and provide multi-agency collaboration and coordination for youth with behavioral health challenges and their families.
The Center of Excellence provides a range of services for LIPTs throughout Georgia, including organizational and backbone support, strategic planning, policy analysis and evaluation and research support. Most recently, the Center of Excellence facilitated multistakeholder discussions to assess the current capacity of LIPTs; understand implementation and service challenges; and make practice, policy, and structural recommendations to move LIPTs forward, with the shared goal of meeting the behavioral health needs of youth and families, wherever they live in Georgia.
