Week 17 Action Alert: HB 691

Please contact Governor Gianforte regarding HB 691.

HB 691, “Community crisis for people who have developmental disabilities" is on Governor Gianforte's desk. Read this bill here. This bill fills a gap in our current community developmental disability system – It creates a good crisis diversion program.

Some information about HB 691:

• Crisis is when someone with a developmental disability becomes upset, afraid, or angry and acts out in a way that causes disruption. Sometimes it causes them to harm themselves or others. This is the type of situation that is likely to end up in an involuntary commitment to the Intensive Behavioral Center (IBC) at Boulder.
• Our current crisis system is just three staff who work for the Developmental Services Division in Helena. These staff are called a "behavior consultation team."  The team is largely unused by community developmental disability service providers, making it largely ineffective.
• This bill replaces that team with a new model. It is patterned after a program in New Mexico that has eliminated all use of institutional settings like the IBC. 
• It has three levels: 1) Training current staff at group homes and other locations, 2) intervening and helping train staff during low level crisis situations and 3) helping when there are more serious crisis events by guiding stabilization activities in an alternative placement. 
• The bill funds the new program by taking the current appropriation for the “behavior consultation team.”  The bill requires that those funds be used by the crisis team, which must be provided by a private entity.  The bill is designed as a pilot and the Department can determine in what part of the state it is most needed.  

Crisis intervention is important.  Not only is it expensive to have a disruptive crisis, but it also has the potential to cause serious harm to the person or others around them. We need a system so people can be safe and stay in their homes and placements. This bill creates that.

Please do one of two things today:              

• Call the Governor’s office at 406-444-3111 and leave a message with the front desk in your own words, something like: “Please ask the Governor to sign House Bill 691 to improve community crisis services for Montanans with developmental disabilities."

OR

•   Email the Governor with the same message by clicking here. 

Click here to read this bill.

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We will be posting an electronic newsletter each Friday during the 2021 legislative session. We will give you information about upcoming budget and general bill hearings, developments for other bills we are following and action alerts when these bills are coming up for votes.  

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