Our Vision

Our Current and Immediate Vision

Riverside County needs more and improved mental health support, services, and awareness for those living with and experiencing mental health challenges.

There are mental health resources that exist; however, we observe and experience that many of these resources are limited in their scope of available services and their eligibility for who can access and use those services. This observation and experience itself creates barriers to accessing equitable and sustainable mental health support and care. Our goal for RCPS is to be a community and peer led mental health organization that is available for all individuals to utilise and have unlimited access to.

To do this we are going to become the leading mental health organization for Riverside County that serves as a central gateway for all seeking mental health support and services.

Currently, the programs we are starting with primarily are our peer mentorship, community education, peer counseling, peer support groups and our hospital follow up program. As we work towards manifesting our services within Riverside County, we want to create a network and partnership with all mental health agencies, schools, hospitals, and law enforcement within the county to unify the mental health system. We want to have the peer recovery model be the foundation and standard practice for all agencies and organizations to create an effective and equitable system of support, treatment, and hope that individuals with mental health challenges find effective and actually want. This means having peers in leadership and authority roles in collaboration with clinical leadership to drive and determine the system and the best routes for success.

We aim to have partnerships with all levels of county funded mental and behavioral health agencies, all county health systems, private mental health and medical agencies and organizations, schools and law enforcement to:

• eliminate the barriers for accessing equitable mental health support

• eliminate the stigma associated with mental health and those experiencing mental health challenges

• change the foundation and practice of treatment towards the peer support and recovery model with the "assistance" of clinical models

• create a unified system of programs and services in every city, school, hospital, law enforcement agency within the county where no person is left behind or without

Additionally, we want to become a National Suicide Prevention Lifeline crisis center and offer a county wide mobile crisis team that can respond to individuals experiencing mental health crises with peer crisis responders; we want to offer a hospitals team to be available in hospitals to support individuals during their stay; and we want to offer a school's team to support students who need mental health support from trained peers.

Our Future Vision

Beyond that, we want to expand far beyond that and create a nationwide organization and model for peer support and mental health recovery. This will require unwavering perseverance and dedication, the unity of countless staff working together, intensive networking and collaboration at all levels of the mental health system, legislative action, and the financial resources and funding to accomplish this goal.

We want to have nationwide partnerships with hospitals to bridge care for patients, law enforcement to have standard procedures when engaging with people experiencing mental health challenges, clinical mental health organizations, and local, state, and federal government. We want to offer more services, services that reflect both equitable help towards individuals, and help that individuals' actually want and are happy with.

A critical objective is to create a comprehensive and all-inclusive training program for mental health support that is founded on the peer recovery model that incorporates clinical modalities of treatment that, thus, becomes the nationwide standard for all mental health organizations and agencies.

We would also like to create a comprehensive and thorough resource directory of all available mental health and community services that lists every known mental health and other community resources categorized by location, services provided, cost, transportation access, eligibility criteria etc. with a user rating feature to allow the community to make informed decisions in choosing their sources of support and care. This resource directory will help those seeking services have the information they need to make informed decisions in choosing their services and supports.