Our Roots

Vermont Care Partners is a collaboration between Vermont Care Network and the Vermont Council.

Incorporated as Behavioral Health Network of Vermont in 1994, Vermont Care Network is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that creates effective partnerships and efficiencies to facilitate the provision of accessible, high quality services and supports throughout the state. Committed to excellence and innovation, VCN provides strategic return on investment by serving as a vehicle for collaboration, systems integration and improvement, economies of scale and new opportunities and markets.

The Vermont Council of Developmental and Mental Health Services is a 501(c)6 non-profit trade association. For more than 40 years the Vermont Council has formed socially responsible alliances and partnerships and conducted information sharing, education and advocacy at the national, state, and local levels to enable individuals and families to achieve their full potential.

In 2014, the two organizations came together under the umbrella name of Vermont Care Partners and today, while still separate legal entities, we work together as one on behalf of the sixteen agencies – the VCP Network.

Many of our agencies came into being as the result of the 1963 Community Mental Health Act, which was intended to move people living with mental illness out of institutions such as the Vermont State Hospital and back into productive and fulfilling lives in their communities. In 1993, the Brandon Training School was closed. Again our agencies worked together to enable people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who had been institutionalized or would have been institutionalized to live productive and fulfilling lives in their communities.

Today, this remains our goal. In addition to office-based care, over 50% of services and supports are provided where people live, work and go to school. We provide mobile crisis outreach 24 hours, seven days a week. We work in close collaboration with service providers across all sectors to provide high quality, cost-effective care. Public investment in our services reduces expenditures in law enforcement, corrections, hospitals and institutions, and human services.