Children's Mental Health Bureau Mission and Goals
The mission of the state Children's Mental Health Bureau is to provide leadership in the development of a system of mental health care for Montana youth and their families that is integrated within the health care system.
Before July 1, 2003, the state's mental health services for children were administered through the Addictive and Mental Disorders Division of the Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS). The 2003 Legislature transferred the responsibility to a newly created Children's Mental Health Bureau (CMHB) within the Health Resources Division of DPHHS.
The bureau is responsible for designing, managing, and evaluating the Medicaid mental health service plan and the Children's Mental Health Service Plan (CMHSP). The bureau also is tasked with designing, implementing, and evaluating a community-based system of services for youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and their families.
The overarching goals of the bureau are to: 1) develop and coordinate an integrated service support system for children under 18 who are seriously emotionally disturbed, living in or about to be placed in a treatment setting outside their home, and in need of the assistance of more than one state agency; and 2) reduce the number of youth in out-of-state psychiatric inpatient hospital residential placements by returning as many as possible to in-state treatment environments.
This "system of care" approach is expressed in 52-2-301 MCA, which calls on the state to provide for and encourage "the development of a stable system of care, including quality education, treatment, and services for high-risk children with multi-agency service needs either in their homes or in the least restrictive and most appropriate setting for their needs in order to preserve the unity and welfare of the family whenever possible, and to provide for their care and protection and mental, social, and physical development."
To accomplish these tasks, the bureau has established a number of goals and indicators .
| GOAL 1: | Transform the children's public mental health system into a recovery-based system of care for children with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and their families. |
| Indicator 1: | 90 percent of the children with SED and their families who receive community-based mental health services and are surveyed will report their perception that they have been involved in their treatment planning. |
| Indicator 2: | The percentage of inpatient hospital psychiatric residential treatment facility placements in out-of-state facilities will be limited to 15 percent of all inpatient psychiatric residential treatment placements for youth with serious emotional disturbance. |
| Indicator 3: | A minimum of one Kid's Management Authority (KMA) will be established in each of the five Children's Mental Health management regions by July 1, 2006. |
| Indicator 4: | 65 percent of the children with SED and their families who receive services, including targeted case-management services under Medicaid, will report positively about their outcomes. |
| Indicator 5: | Early identification screening for children with mental illness will be established under the Medicaid Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) screening program. |
| GOAL 2: | Provide medically necessary mental health services to eligible children and adolescents who have serious emotional disturbance (SED). |
| Indicator 1: | An array of community-based services for children and adolescents (youth) with SED will be maintained. |
| Indicator 2: | The average length of stay in inpatient hospital psychiatric residential care will be maintained at less than 6 months (180 days) for the state fiscal year. |
| Indicator 3: | 75 percent of children with SED and their families who receive community-based services and are surveyed will report a positive perception of access to services. |
| Indicator 4: | 95 percent of youth with SED and their families who receive community-based targeted case management services will report a high cultural sensitivity of staff delivering service. |
| Indicator 5: | 18 percent of eligible youth will access mental health services. |
| Indicator 6: | 4 percent of all Montana youth under 18 years of age will access mental health services. |
| Indicator 7: | The Children's Mental Health Service Program (CMHSP) for community-based mental health services to low-income children and adolescents with SED who are within 150 percent of federal poverty guidelines will be continued. |
| GOAL 3: | Integrate services for children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance who impact multiple agencies in the community. |
| Indicator 1: | The Children's System of Care Planning Committee will meet a minimum of eight times during state fiscal year 2005 to help the Department train communities to develop local Kids Management Agencies (KMA), identify issues and solutions, and facilitate coordination of multiple agencies resources. |
| Indicator 2: | Two 2-day conferences (training opportunities for local communities) will be conducted to educate, inform, and obtain input on the system of care and Kid's Management Authority development. |
| Indicator 3: | Contract requirements for agreement between mental health providers and substance abuse providers will be maintained. |
| Indicator 4: | A minimum of one additional Kid's Management Authority (KMA) will be developed in each of the bureau's five geographic management/planning regions. |
|
Indicator 5: |
Technical assistance will be provided to communities directed at the development of KMAs at the local level. |
| Indicator 6: | The System of Care federal grant will be implemented in partnership with the Crow Nation and local communities with the objective of parent participation in all levels of system operations, including but not limited to individual case planning, policy decisions, system design, and system evaluation and the reduction of stigmatism associated with the illness of serious emotional disturbance. |
| Indicator 7: | Review of therapeutic group care services, including licensure requirements, population served, population needing to be served, reimbursement rate, cost study, co-occurring capable readiness, and other related issues, will be completed. |
Page last updated: 07/03/2006
