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EXAMPLES OF PUBLIC BEHAVIORAL HEALTH CHILD AND
Storytelling Storytelling is a school-based primary prevention program designed to provide culturally meaningful storytelling as part of the school curriculum to reduce youth violence and idleness, and increase self-esteem and productivity for youth from 12 to 14 years of age. The program is administered by Compass Health Care, Inc. and is located at the middle school at the Tohona O'odham Indian Reservation in Arizona. Each year this program serves 100 youth in the Indian Oasis Baboquivari School District and has a total annual budget of $150,000. The program uses story telling to provide youth with a culturally appropriate curriculum in health, social studies and language arts and has been shown to reduce the number of disciplinary incidents in one year by 54 percent. The program has received an award from the Center for Substance Abuse and Treatment (CSAT) as an exemplary prevention program.
Behavior Coaching Behavior Coaching is a program that serves youths with serious emotional disability and/or related behavioral problems. Behavior coaches work with one youth at a time and function as an extension of the clinical services provided. A behavior coach works every day with youth in school and/or at home, at recreation, etc. This type of intervention has been shown to produce fewer class disruptions, facilitate the learning process and assist teacher, students, and other family members to work and relate with the youth. Behavior coaches are reported to improve the quality of life and increase the safety and stability of the youth and their families.
Interagency Case Management Project - ICMP The Interagency Case Management Project in Lake Havasu City, Arizona serves to coordinate care and manage multi-service access for children with serious emotional disturbance and/or behavioral problems. The multi-agency team (MAT) is comprised of representatives from Child Protective Services, Developmental Disability Services, Juvenile Corrections, Probation and Parole, and local school systems. The team meets on a regular basis and has access to mental health flexible funds for most consumers. The MAT also utilizes behavioral coaches when available. This process provides improved coordination of care, utilizes creative problem solving, receives high level of parent satisfaction and at least anecdotally produces positive outcomes for children and systems. According to an Interim Impact Study Report in January 1999, children in the ICMP project experienced a statistically significant decrease in the restrictiveness of their out-of-home placements during the time period reviewed.2
Luz / Southside Partnership Luz is a substance abuse prevention program for Spanish-speaking youth located in the Southside of Tucson, Arizona. The program provides community education, neighborhood association development and training, prevention of alcohol and substance abuse and community empowerment. The Partnership has been recognized for the many benefits that it has brought to the community, including improved community morale and an acceptance of community based mental health and substance abuse services. This occurred because the program was respectful of the local culture and the community's needs. Many youth and families have turned toward the Partnership for informal referral and support and the office now serves as a drop-in center for the community.
The Model Court Project Pima County Juvenile Court is one of nine Model Court Projects nationwide to ensure an accelerated judicial process for cases that involve children who are the victims of abuse, neglect and abandonment. This program hopes to bring swift closure and hopefully a happy ending by implementing the following: one judge for one family, fast preliminary hearing, accelerated court calendar, centralized data collection, and specific recruiting and dependency training for all contract attorneys.
State of Delaware - Integrated Assessment Under the umbrella agency of the Department of Children, Youth and their Families, an integrated assessment, gate keeping and authorization unit has been established within the Division of Child Mental Health as part of the state's Medicaid Section 1115 waiver project. The centralized assessment, available to referrals from child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health systems incorporate EPSDT requirements with a standardized tool that is linked to a protocol for levels of care. Since the unit became operational in 1997, the state has reduced length of stay in residential treatment and psychiatric hospitalization.
State of Iowa - Clinical Assessment and Consultation Teams - CACT Through a statewide Children's Medicaid initiative, five systems (child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health, mental retardation, and substance abuse services) have collaborated to develop Clinical Assessment and Consultation Teams. This program assesses children referred by the four systems for appropriate triage into various levels of community-based services. The team also provides continuing stay review and monitoring of service outcomes. The project was incorporated into the state's Medicaid plan as well as the Casey Foundation De-categorization Project in which all non- Medicaid funds at the county level were bundled and used by multiple children's systems. As a result of CACT's determination of children's medical/behavioral need for rehabilitative treatment services, Iowa received almost $25 million in federal Medicaid funding in FY '97 to serve approximately 4,000 children per month.
Systems of Care - Federal Department of Health and Human Services Through the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program, DHHS has put out a seven volume series called Systems of Care - Promising Practices in Children's Mental Health. This publication of monographs is based on the experiences of 22 of the current 41 program grantees in their work to create a system of care that provides effective, coordinated care to children with a serious emotional disturbance and their families. The series includes: New Roles for Families in Systems of Care, Promising Practices in Family-Provider Collaboration, The Role of Education in a System of Care: Effectively Serving Children with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders, Promising Practices in Wraparound, Promising Practices: Training Strategies for Serving Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families in a System of Care, Building Collaboration in Systems of care, and A Compilation of Lessons Learned from the 22 Grantees of the 1997 Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program.
2The Maricopa County ICMP demonstration site was also reviewed. A comprehensive evaluation of that pilot project is being conducted. Thus, it has been decided to await the results of that evaluation before adding that site as an example of best practice. |