Delivery of comprehensive mental health services at the community level requires a significant investment of public resources. Effective community mental health service providers have learned that they must draw from a variety of sources if they are to offer a full spectrum of services. As discussed later in this document, funding for mental health treatment and associated supports in a typical community may come from several different federal agencies, state general fund allocations, and local tax levies.

Resourceful administrators have learned how to use scant state and local funds to leverage money from other sources and to maximize revenues from federal programs such as Medicaid. They look to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for funds to provide housing for their clients, and they try to join federal block grant funds for mental health and substance abuse treatment with other sources in order to provide integrated services for co-occurring substance abuse and mental disorders. Even the most artful administrators at the provider, county, or state system levels have difficulty matching resources to need. While agencies and systems survive by identifying and tapping a range of sources, the inescapable conclusion is that funding limitations in many communities prevent the public mental health system from making a full range of effective services available.

Broad implementation of the kinds of comprehensive, individualized services briefly described in this section - services that have been successfully implemented in some communities around the country - will result in fewer people with mental illness coming into contact with the criminal justice system. Provision of necessary treatments and supports is the most effective "precontact" diversion from the criminal justice system for people with mental illness.