HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE FIELD
Feature Articles:
- Sarasota Partnership for Children’s Mental Health Evaluation Team
- Columbia River Wraparound
- Local Communities Fueling Statewide Systems of Care in Missouri
Sarasota Partnership for Children’s Mental Health Evaluation Team
As part of its local evaluation process, the Sarasota Partnership for Children’s Mental Health (MS Word) provides Family Reports to families at their 12 month follow-up interviews. These reports contains information on outcome data from the national evaluation in conjunction with measures selected for implementation by a collaborative of early childhood systems of care and it is updated every 6 months. These individualized reports show the family progress over time and reflect how things are going for the family at that point in time.
Tools included within the Family Reports are the Family Life Questionnaire, Caregiver Strain Questionnaire, Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Scale (BITSEA)/ The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (determined upon the child’s age), Vineland Screener, Child Behavioral Checklist, Behavior and Emotional Rating Scale and Parenting Stress Index. The report also contains a section where families can reflect on their own growth and progress.
Family Interviewers present the report to the family during the follow-up interviews. Interviewers are trained on the various components of the report so they are able to answer any questions families may have. When the family agrees to it, a copy of this report is given to the Wraparound Facilitator so it can be used in the plan of care.
Columbia River Wraparound
Columbia River Wraparound, a 2003 system of care Initiative located in Mid-Columbia, Oregon, has implemented a creative mechanism to provide feedback data to their community partners. They routinely provide unfiltered data to their governance board directly from their evaluation component via an evaluation report. The report includes a stop light icon - a "green light" indicates positive data and a "red light" highlights data that warrants attention by the governance board. Highlighting areas of concern and success in the data allow the program to celebrate successes and make changes as needed. It has also served as a prompt for specific data requests on topics that are of use to various stakeholders.
» Access all of Columbia River Wraparounds data reports.
Local Communities Fueling Statewide Systems of Care in Missouri
Investments in four local systems of care in Missouri are paying dividends beyond their borders.
Three cooperative agreement sites—Show Me Kids (2002), St. Louis Youth in Transition (2003) and Circle of HOPE (2006)—along with the graduated St. Charles County (1999) community—form the backbone of a developing transformation of behavioral health services for Missouri’s children and families.
The Missouri Department of Mental Health is consciously coordinating the work of system builders in each of those venues, extracting documented "lessons learned" for application in other counties. Already several such counties have volunteered to embrace systems of care, ahead of a statewide curve supported by legislation. Missouri’s comprehensive systems management team joins an array of child-serving agency leaders with families and youth to help shape a more integrated approach to address often complex human needs. Public education and child welfare systems are among partners at the State level who can set a tone for strong collaboration in counties and cities.
Like all cooperative agreement sites, the Missouri communities focus on particular populations in establishing or improving systems of care. The soon-to-graduate Show Me Kids agreement has broadened treatment and support horizons for children with co-occurring developmental, sensory and neurological conditions and significant mental health needs in six counties around Springfield. St. Louis’ Transitions is tackling impediments to excellence in mental health services for youth in the protective custody of public child welfare. The newest site, in St. Joseph, is building its system on the three-legged stool of its schools, its primary health care and behavioral health systems.
The unique focuses of these communities provide ample learning experiences for statewide application. Organizing consequential family voice, and spreading a high quality wraparound approach, serve as two strong examples of experience-driven synergy, Missouri-style.
The highly effective family organization in the St. Charles County community (FACT-MO) is closely mentoring an emerging new organization, Our Voices, Our Choices (OVOC), across the river in St. Louis. Another effective family organization, The Family Bridges, has developed in partnership with Show Me Kids, and all three communities are now working with the State-level team to help develop a consistent statewide availability of family support services. These assets, in turn, are supporting rapid development of family organizations in St. Joseph.
St. Louis, appreciating the inherent complexities of its special population, has been leading the effort to develop a high quality wraparound approach. Now building its internal coaching and training capacity, St. Louis has opened its doors to train practitioners from Missouri’s other system of care communities. In turn, Missouri is embarking on an effort to set up statewide standards or protocols to support wraparound practice. Here, too, the local system developers are helping to shape the statewide direction.
Connie Cahalan, a leader for children’s mental health services in the Department of Mental Health, serves as principal investigator for all three current cooperative agreements in Missouri. Each month Connie’s team hosts a 90 minute learning call among all the local systems of care. Practical peer-to-peer sharing on the calls also informs statewide transformation work. A statewide training calendar and a statewide "stats blast" are helping to fertilize and feed positive systems change beyond the federally-supported local sites.
Federal investments in systems of care have yielded improvements in many communities. Similar State investment can both sustain and multiply those dividends. The STARS Network in central Minnesota, and the Impact (Ingham County) and Kalamazoo Wraps teams in Michigan, are likewise contributing to statewide system improvement. Missouri’s mutually reinforcing partnership with its local cooperative agreement sites is an especially positive, useful example.