BSU receives $49,824 grant from Minnesota Job Skills Partnership

BEMIDJI, Minn. – Bemidji State University, the Minnesota Job Skills Partnership (MJSP), the Minnesota Department of Employee and Economic Development and the Upper Mississippi Mental Health Center (UMMHC) today signed a capacity-building grant which will allow Bemidji State to provide accreditation training to behavior health providers and to help UMMHC complete its process to become accredited.

The grant from the MJSP, which totals $49,824, along with approximately $55,000 in funding from UMMHC, will support a one-year training collaboration which will allow UMMHC to undergo a process to meet accreditation standards set forth by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). Approximately 68 mental health professionals, business operations staff and psychologists at UMMHC will receive advanced training in business process improvement, business principels and continuous improvement and CARF accreditation.

“We think this is a very innovative project,” said Manfred Tatzmann, executive director of UMMHC. “We’re the first non-profit in the state of Minnesota to receive this kind of grant. This will help our organization set up a business process and we hope to become accredited. If we succeed, we’ll be the first mental health organization in Minnesota to go through this process. Doing this will improve the capabilities of our staff and improve our service to clients.”

Funding through the MJSP will also increase the capacity of Bemidji State to offer CARF certification training to other behavioral health providers.

“These types of grants and partnerships are so significant to the University,” said Bill Maki, vice president for administration and finance at Bemidji State. “These partnerships help build our capacity as an organization and help us pursue our mission to improve the quality of life for the region.”

For more information regarding the grant, please contact the Center for Research and Innovation at (218) 755-4900, toll-free at (888) 738-3224 or on the Web at http://www.cri-bsu.org.

About Upper Mississippi Mental Health Center, Inc.
UMMHC was established in 1960 and has continuously served the north-central region of Minnesota as a community-based, non-profit provider of mental health and addiction services. With a primary operation located in Bemidji and a satellite site in Park Rapids, Minn., UMMHC is the largest and most comprehensive provider of behavioral services in the region. It provides counseling and therapeutic services in adult and family services, children’s services, addictions recovery, gambling addiction recovery, home-based family services and sexual abuse treatment. UMMHC has a client base of over 3,000 and serves four Minnesota counties, including the Red Lake, White Earth and Leech Lake reservations.
For further information about UMMHC, visit it on the Web at: http://www.ummhcmn.org.