Outreach and Engagement in ACT and FACT: A Persistent and Committed Approach
Overview
In Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (FACT), effective outreach and engagement approaches are essential for supporting clients who are navigating serious mental illness (SMI) and significant vulnerabilities such as homelessness, justice involvement, and mental health guardianship. This training will introduce assertive outreach and engagement practices as cornerstones of recovery-oriented, evidence-based mental health service delivery. This training will outline person-centered frameworks (e.g., stages of change) that can aid providers in navigating both the initial outreach process and ongoing engagement of clients enrolled in ACT and FACT services. This training will discuss important considerations for clinicians related to client self-determination (Carrara, 2025) while also differentiating persistent and committed engagement approaches from coercive approaches. Participants will review factors that impede clients’ engagement in services (Aves, 2024) and strategies for building trust with difficult-to-reach clients, including those who do not initially acknowledge a need for services (Gandy-Guedes et al., 2018; Burke & Warburton, 2025).Finally, this training will present evidence-based strategies (e.g., motivational interviewing) that ACT and FACT providers can use to foster intrinsic motivation and assist clients in pursuing self-identified recovery goals.
Learning objectives
- Define assertive engagement within the context of the evidence-based Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model and illustrate how it may differ from engagement approaches utilized in less intensive behavioral health service settings
- Describe barriers to effectively engaging clients with serious mental illness (SMI) and high service needs in ACT and identify strategies for addressing these barriers to increase likelihood of enrollment in services
- Discuss person-centered frameworks that can guide effective ACT outreach and engagement approaches
- Explain how evidence-based outreach and engagement strategies can be applied within the context of ACT to support effective service delivery
