(a) The General Assembly finds that a comprehensive range of quality services and opportunities is vitally important to the existence and well-being of persons with mental health, mental retardation, and substance abuse problems and their families. The General Assembly further finds that the state has an obligation and a responsibility to develop and implement planning and service delivery systems which focus on a core set of consumer oriented, community based values and principles, which includes but is not limited to the following:

(1) Consumers and families should have choices about services and providers and should have substantive input into the planning and delivery of all services;

(2) A single point of accountability should exist for fiscal, service, and administrative issues to ensure better coordination of services among all programs and providers and to promote cost-effective, efficient service delivery and administration;

(3) The system should be appropriately comprehensive and adaptive to allow consumers and their families to access the services they desire and need;

(4) Public programs are the foundation of the service planning and delivery system and they should be valued and nurtured; at the same time, while assuring comparable standards of quality, private sector involvement should be increased to allow for expanded consumer choice and improved cost effectiveness;

(5) Decision making should reside at the local level, with the primary authority vested in local government, consumers, families, advocates, and other interested local parties;

(6) The system should ensure that the needs of consumers who are most in need are met at the appropriate service levels; at the same time, prevention strategies should be emphasized for those disabilities which are known to be preventable;

(7) The system should be designed to provide the highest quality of services utilizing flexibility in funding, incentives, and outcome evaluation techniques which reinforce quality, accountability, efficiency, and consumer satisfaction;

(8) The functions of service planning, coordination, contracting, resource allocation, and client assessment should be separated from the actual service delivery programs;

(9) Consumers and families should have a single, community based point of entry into the system; and

(10) Consumers, staff, providers, and governing board members should receive ongoing training and education, and should have access to key management resources such as information systems and technical and professional support services.

(b) Local governments, specifically county governing authorities, have provided outstanding leadership and support for mental health, mental retardation, and substance abuse programs, and the General Assembly finds that their investments, both personal and capital, should be valued and utilized in any improved system. As such, the state and any new governing structure should take special precautions to ensure that the county governing authorities have an expanded level of input into decision making and resource allocation and that any services or programs should continue to use and expand their use of county facilities and resources wherever appropriate and possible.

(c) The purpose of this chapter and Chapter 2 of this title is to provide for a comprehensive and improved mental health, mental retardation, and substance abuse service planning and delivery system in this state which will develop and promote the essential public interests of the state and the citizens thereof. These provisions should be constructed liberally to achieve their purposes.