About Us

Founded in 2014, MNCCS is a culturally responsive agency that provides mental health, housing, and waiver services with more than 20 providers on staff. We are a minority-owned and operated business, with our owner and more than 80% of our agency staff identifying with Somali or other east African communities. Our mental health practitioners and case managers are native speakers of Somali, Arabic, Oromo, Amharic, and Swahili, in addition to English. We deliver services that recognize and respect the behavior, ideas, values, beliefs, customs, language, rituals, and practices of East African immigrants. Due to MNCCS’ ability to combine mental health, housing, and waiver services and our excellent track record, we receive referrals to serve individuals from many other backgrounds as well. Agency-wide, MNCCS currently serves more than 370 people in Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, Rice, Olmsted, and Steele County. One of the lines of service includes:

Staff Experience and Training Plan

MNCCS has strong leadership that helps our agency expand services and meet the needs of multiple agencies and populations. MNCCS’ CFO Hussein Hashi is a CPA, and CEO Hussein Mohamed has a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration. Most MNCCS staff hold B.A. or M.A. degrees in psychology, social work, or business administration. Staff retention is outstanding, with just 7% turnover agency-wide last year. MNCCS provides clinical supervision for all staff who require it and also contracts for supportive services for our clients as needed. A contract with Mental Health Resources (MHR), one of the largest mental health providers in the metro area, provides 40 hours of MNCCS initial staff training, including cross-cultural service provision and Motivational Interviewing training.

MNCCS Housing Program Manager Ister Ali (B.A. in Business Administration plus 5 years of experience in direct service and managerial Housing Support roles) has primary responsibility for monitoring quality within MNCCS Housing Programs, under the direct supervision of Hussein Mohamed, CEO. The Housing Program Manager monitors outcomes at each stage of the Housing Support process (referrals transitioning successfully to housing; housed participants maintaining tenancy) via a cross-program spreadsheet, as given above. This allows her to look for variable outcomes across contracts, analyze causes, and provide staff training and support as needed to improve results. Ister personally hires and trains each new Housing Support Case Manager as well as consulting with dedicated office staff to teach them the correct processing of housing-related eligibility paperwork for various programs. An internal Housing Support manual provides a basic reference for staff. MNCCS’ Housing Support staff and the Program Manager have a staff/supervision meeting monthly. Ister also meets weekly with each individual staff to answer questions, correct errors, and consult about specific cases. Through these quality management efforts, MNCCS makes sure that all our Housing Support staff understand the work that is expected of them, the protocols and compliance requirements of their programs, and effective ways of engaging Housing Support clients.

MNCCS has a strong back office, and our documentation is regularly found to be fully compliant by health plans, counties, and federal CARES funding administrators. We use an EHR (BreezyNotes) that supports tracking of both billable services and client case notes.