* Press release excerpt…

Building on the administration’s funding increases for child welfare and wellbeing, today Governor Pritzker announced the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative to evaluate and redesign the delivery of behavioral health services for children and adolescents in the State of Illinois.

The Governor tasked the Initiative with building a coordinated, inter-agency approach to ensure young people with significant behavioral health needs receive the community and residential services they need to thrive while providing parents, guardians, and family members with transparency and clarity in the process. The initiative will provide a transformation blueprint by the end of 2022. The Governor also named Chapin Hall child welfare expert Dana Weiner, PhD, as Director of the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative.

“I’m launching the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative to evaluate and redesign the systems that support our most vulnerable kids and adolescents – so that down the line, Illinois families will be better able to access holistic, wraparound support for children in need,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Under the leadership of nationally recognized child welfare expert Dana Weiner, PhD, and six state agency heads, this Initiative will deliver a transformative blueprint by the end of the year.” […]

Governor Pritzker has increased funding for DCFS from $1.2 billion in FY2019 to $1.55 billion in FY2022 with a proposed additional increase to $1.8 billion this coming fiscal year. The Governor’s proposed fiscal year 2023 budget provides a new investment of $7 million for a completely redesigned independent living program which will better support youth transitioning out of DCFS’ care.

Additionally, the Pritzker Administration recently launched an $86 million effort to support local efforts to develop comprehensive school systems grounded in mental health and trauma.

The FY2023 budget also includes $150 million to fully implement the Pathways to Success program at DHFS, which helps Medicaid-enrolled children under age 21 who have complex behavioral health needs and require intensive services and support. The program will begin upon federal CMS approval without any additional implementation action from the GA. […]

At Governor Pritzker’s direction, HFS, DHS, DCFS, ISBE, DPH and DJJ have put together an interagency working group to better support children in need of behavioral health services and their families, whether they access services in their community, at their school, or through a residential program. The Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative turns that collaboration into a formal, step-by-step review of existing systems in order to better support Illinois children and families.

The Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative will examine:

• Needs of children requiring behavioral health services
• Allocation of resources to meet needs within existing programs
• Pathways for accessing needed services
• Eligibility requirements for levels of care
• Decision-making practices for allocation of resources
• Alignment of policies, rules, regulations to support transparent, efficient, and effective service delivery
• Barriers to effective interagency coordination
• Infrastructure needs to support new pathways and existing programs
• Best practices from other comparable child-serving systems across the country

The pandemic has only made the need for improvements more urgent. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the proportion of children’s mental health-related emergency department (ED) visits among all pediatric ED visits increased and remained elevated through October 2020. Compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health-related visits for children aged 5-11 and 12-17 years increased 24 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

* Gov. Pritzker was asked about the connection of this plan to the latest DCFS crises that we’ve already been discussing here today…

Well, that’s precisely what this is about, right, to make sure that we’re coordinating systems and services so that people don’t have to sit for 117 days or, as we heard, for sometimes longer and without getting the services they need. And parents, of course, are desperately need. Foster parents and others. And so, look, we’ve put tremendous resources in already to try to staff up, to make sure that we’re serving these kids, to make sure that we’re, at DCFS for example, hiring up to standards here. And then very importantly, creating residential beds that got destroyed under the prior administration. 500 residential beds went away. And I think everybody here that’s been involved in the system of providing these services knows that these don’t come back, like, with the snap of a finger. It takes literally years to go build back up those. And that’s why we all are committed to the consistency of systems.

Thoughts?

*** UPDATE 1 *** Cook County Public Guardian Charles Golbert…

This is a positive, albeit long overdue, step for children and families. Of course, the devil is in the details, and I look forward seeing the comprehensive blueprint promised by the end of the year.

It must be noted that this is not an answer to DCFS’s placement crisis. And children in DCFS care don’t have months and years to wait for the placements and services they need.

Just yesterday a Cook County Juvenile Court judge held DCFS Director Marc Smith in contempt of court for the seventh time this year for failing to place children appropriately in violation of court orders. This most recent contempt finding involved a boy DCFS has kept in a shelter for more than a year, in violation of court orders, because DCFS doesn’t have a placement for him. This youth doesn’t have another year to wait for more studies.

I hope that this initiative will be implemented in a robust manner with the sense of urgency needed.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Kyle Hillman with the National Association of Social Workers, Illinois Chapter…

We join other advocates in support of this new initiative Governor Pritzker is embarking on (in his fourth year of office) to address the mental health crisis children have been facing. While we are still unsure how this new initiative will work differently than groups like the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership, any new effort is always welcomed. We do hope this new blueprint initiative though doesn’t delay efforts to address a mental health crisis both within DCFS and within our schools that need an immediate response and a sense of urgency that has been greatly lacking.