* AP…

A mental health crisis among children in Illinois will be fought by streamlining and easing access to necessary treatment and coordinating between six separate state agencies, Gov. J.B. Pritzker plans to announce Friday.

A report examining the capacity and condition of Illinois’ response to behavioral health in young people has been in the works for nearly a year. It sketches avenues to help families understand mental illness, then make it easier for them to get required care without wrangling among disparate state agencies. A copy of the report was obtained in advance by The Associated Press.

* From the report…

In response to a nationwide youth mental health crisis, Governor JB Pritzker launched the Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative (“Transformation Initiative”) in March 2022 to evaluate and redesign the delivery of behavioral health services for children and adolescents in Illinois. The Transformation Initiative builds upon the substantial progress made by Illinois agencies to ensure that every young person experiencing mental or behavioral health problems can access needed services. By identifying and addressing current barriers to delivering efficient and effective care, the Transformation Initiative hopes to improve the State’s ability to offer families a set of streamlined, accessible, and responsive solutions. […]

The Governor empowered the Transformation Initiative to analyze systemic problems and, in collaboration with the six child-serving State agencies, to develop creative, evidence-driven solutions in order to achieve five goals:

1. Adjust capacity—so that there are enough of the services we need
2. Streamline processes—so that services can be easily accessed
3. Intervene earlier—so that acute crises can be prevented
4. Increase accountability—so that there is transparency in service delivery
5. Develop agility—so that systems can be responsive to the changing needs of the youth population

* And here’s the outline of the plan…

1. Create a centralized resource for families seeking services for children with significant and complex needs. This will involve building a more robust intake portal to allow families to more easily access information and help.
2. Improve coordination of service delivery, ensuring more seamless transitions and detecting elevated risk earlier.
3. Centralize oversight of residential beds to reduce duplication and enable the State to more effectively manage
residential treatment resources.
4. Implement resource referral technology to enable families to more easily link to services in their communities.
5. Use regular data analytic review to inform provider capacity adjustments, allowing service availability to be adjusted with agility.
6. Adjust rates, including standardizing rates for similar services across State agencies, to ensure that providers are compensated consistently and that youth can receive the services they need to thrive.
7. Increase capacity to serve more children and families by expanding eligibility for current programs and developing new service types so that Illinois has a full continuum of care.
8. Partner with providers on a standard protocol to encourage consistent and transparent development of new programs to meet emerging needs.
9. Offer universal screening in education and pediatrics to ensure that mental and behavioral health problems are detected and addressed early.
10. Facilitate information sharing across State agencies to improve seamlessness and timeliness of interventions, leveraging previous efforts to integrate data and overcome barriers.
11. Build workforce using paraprofessionals and supporting other roles with incentives and creative approaches to credentialling.
12. Fortify community networks by investing in local communities and parent leadership.

* More…

A phased implementation of recommendations will prioritize the most impactful and feasible changes as well as those necessary to establish a foundation so that subsequent changes can be made. The Blueprint outlines the short-, medium-, and long-term goals for implementing these strategies. In the near term, steps are being taken to develop a robust Intake Portal for parents and families seeking access to residential interventions, to increase the State’s ability to deliver comprehensive and flexible services and supports to stabilize youth, to improve the State’s ability to manage residential treatment resources, and to leverage existing partnerships with advocacy and advisory groups. The next set of changes will involve the development and implementation of technological strategies to speed and improve access to outpatient mental health care and to develop programs that need to be expanded or added. In the long term, the Transformation Initiative aims to institutionalize data-guided capacity adjustments, expand the mental health workforce, and implement strategies to promote equity and trust among youth, families, and provider partners.

* Back to the AP…

Friday’s announcement marks the beginning of work to ready the plan for implementation, a report on which Pritzker expects by October. There’s $22.8 million in the governor’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal to complete the planning. […]

Recognizing problems quickly is critical, Weiner said. The U.S. Surgeon General discovered in a 2021 study that on average, there is an 11-year gap between recognizing a child’s potential mental health issue and that child getting treatment.