VISION 2030
Steinberg Institute 2025 Progress Report
The Steinberg Institute’s work is grounded in our Vision 2030 Initiative.
Vision 2030 is our initiative to break the cycle of homelessness, incarceration, and hospitalization for people living with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.
This report highlights the progress we’ve made toward breaking that vicious cycle and expanding access to care for California’s most vulnerable populations.
Today’s landscape makes this work harder but more important than ever. California is in a state deficit, putting programs at risk. An already frayed social safety net is being further challenged under the current federal administration. Instead of investing in proven, compassionate strategies, federal leaders are leaning on punitive, heavy-handed approaches to mental health, substance use, and homelessness.
Still, we remain steadfast in our vision. The work is far from finished. Achieving it will require new partnerships, innovative ideas, and the collective commitment of everyone who cares about building a healthier, more compassionate state.
What is Vision 2030?
We believe people living with serious mental illness and substance use disorders can recover – and deserve the chance to lead stable, meaningful lives. But despite billions invested, access has not improved enough, and we are unable to track meaningful outcomes for Californians living with these conditions.
In 2023 we launched Vision 2030 to address these challenges and transform California’s behavioral health system. Leveraging our role as an independent advocacy organization, we are leaning into research and implementation efforts that will drive our advocacy work and help bring desperately needed accountability to our systems.
Our goals are intentionally ambitious. Without a high bar, the state risks letting complacency prevent true progress.
Vision 2030 Goals
Build Our Workforce
Modernize and strengthen California’s behavioral health workforce to meet the diverse needs of the entire state.
Reduce Homelessness
Reduce the number of unhoused people with mental illness or substance use disorders by half.
Reduce Incarceration
Reduce the number of people with mental illness entering our criminal justice system by half.
Reduce Hospitalization
Reduce the number of people entering hospital emergency departments due to behavioral health crises by half.
Key initiatives
Vision 2030 Solution Symposium
In February, we brought together policymakers, government leaders, philanthropists, providers and researchers for our first-ever Vision 2030 Solution Symposium. The day-long event featured panel discussion exploring our four Vision 2030 goals. Nearly 200 leaders from across sectors gathered to engage in urgent, solutions-driven conversations, moving beyond rhetoric to action.
Ideas to Action Convening Series
To identify practical solutions that can help make our Vision 2030 goals a reality, we hosted four convenings – each one aligned with our four Vision 2030 goals – that brought together leaders across policy, government, advocacy, and technology.
Over thirty organizations joined our convenings to help us tackle the toughest challenges facing California’s behavioral health system. Participant organizations included:
Steinberg Institute Champions
Each year, the Steinberg Institute honors individuals who embody Vision 2030 — people improving the lives of their fellow Californians needing behavioral health support.
Through impactful video storytelling, we share the stories of these Steinberg Institute Champions. This year, we featured a trailblazing addiction recovery center leader, an advocate for Californians leaving incarceration needing behavioral health support, a rural behavioral health case manager, and Sacramento barbers reducing stigma and providing mental health support for their customers.
Reducing system involvement for people with behavioral health challenges by half is no small feat. But we outlined this vision for a reason: to inspire everyone working in this space to think big, work together, and lean into innovative solutions.
Highlights
Updates across the Institute’s advocacy, research, and implementation arms
2024 legislation
In 2024, the Steinberg Institute introduced six bills targeting each of our four Vision 2030 goals. We also supported 47 bills and opposed three. Over half of the bills we supported—27—were signed into law, while every bill we opposed died in the first house.
One of our sponsored bills, Improving Behavioral Health Outcomes in Our Child Welfare System (Assembly Bill 1907), authored by Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, was signed into law. The bill enhanced the Child Welfare Indicators Project by incorporating essential behavioral health data.
2025 legislation
In 2025, we sponsored two pieces of legislation, supported 30 bills, and opposed two bills.
Our first sponsored bill, Public Safety Transparency Act (Senate Bill 319), authored by Senator Angelique Ashby, would have created an outcomes and accountability framework for Proposition 36, which established treatment-mandated felonies for certain drug crimes.
Our second sponsored bill, Full Service Partnerships (AB 348), authored by Assemblymember Maggy Krell, would establish presumptive eligibility for full-service partnerships—so that when someone clearly meets clinical criteria for serious mental illness, providers don’t have to wait for paperwork to initiate care.
In 2023 we launched our research arm of the Institute to advance our evidence-based advocacy and implementation work. Our research agenda is closely aligned with our Vision 2030 goals. By analyzing system utilization and workforce capacity, we lay the groundwork for identifying solutions that strengthen this continuum and ultimately reduce these adverse outcomes.
Key Research Projects
Reducing Systems Involvement for Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses and Substance Use Disorders
We conducted two interconnected projects to understand the current landscape of system utilization and the gaps, opportunities, and challenges associated with expanding access to care. One interviewed behavioral health officials to get on-the-ground insights into how counties assess and place individuals across different levels of care. The second quantified statewide and regional crisis care capacity across the crisis system.
Behavioral Health Workforce Survey
We surveyed more than 300 providers to capture critical perspectives on workforce capacity and barriers to care. Our findings highlight two areas for immediate action: reducing burnout by strengthening professional training and increasing insurance participation. Use of technology to ease administrative burden also emerged as a viable solution.
Our team has launched a series of implementation partnerships that help us progress towards our Vision 2030 goals. As an implementation partner, we come to the table with a deep understanding of the policy and research landscape. We support our partners in strategically advancing leadership buy-in, capacity building, knowledge sharing, use of best practices, and continuous improvement.
Key Implementation Partnerships
iFoster Partnership in LA County: Building Behavioral Health Career Pathways
Growing our behavioral health workforce requires opening career pathways. With funding from the R&S Kayne Foundation, this year the Steinberg Institute and iFoster partnered to expand access to behavioral health careers for Opportunity Youth in Los Angeles County. This partnership builds on our advocacy for SB 803 (Beall, 2020), which the Institute co-sponsored to establish Medi-Cal peer support specialists in California.
Helping Local Leaders Implement Behavioral Health Transformation
California is transforming its behavioral health systems through multiple programs and initiatives, including Proposition 1, BH-CONNECT, and CalAIM. County behavioral health departments are tasked with implementing these programs. We launched two separate initiatives with partner organizations that work directly with county teams to build frameworks and provide hands-on assistance with these system changes.
North State Behavioral Health and Criminal Justice Leadership Convening
In partnership with the Rural County Representatives of California, Arch Collaborative and Partnership HealthPlan of California, the Institute convened more than fifty rural county leaders across thirteen counties from the behavioral health and criminal justice space to collaborate and align on services that best support their communities.
Get involved
Contribute to our cause
Your support fuels our work to expand behavioral health care for Californians who need it most. Every contribution—big or small—makes a difference.
With a recurring Vision 2030 Partner contribution, you’ll receive exclusive benefits—gifts, early access to Steinberg Institute events, quarterly debriefs, policy briefings and more.
Stay in the know
Stay up to date on the work of the Steinberg Institute by signing up for our email updates. We’ll keep you posted on important legislation, initiatives, and more. We respect your time (and inbox), so we promise not to “spam” you with too much communication.