Deadline: 23-Sep-22
Applications are now open for the Children’s Crisis Continuum Pilot Program to provide a framework for a highly integrated continuum of care for foster youth with high acuity needs to be modeled across California.
The program is jointly implemented by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS).The purpose of the Children’s Crisis Continuum is to fully integrate the system of care for foster youth enabling a seamless transition between service settings and to provide stabilization and treatment to foster youth with high acuity needs within the least restrictive setting possible.
The pilot program builds upon a theory of change that involves a provider having the ability to direct the entire continuum of service from the highest levels of care to a family-based home and having the capacity to provide services throughout the continuum.
Goals of the Pilot
- To develop a trauma-focused system of care through which intensive care, qualified supervision and behavioral health services are provided in the home environment including on-site crisis response to respond to and de-escalate circumstances in which individual(s) are experiencing behavioral health symptoms/conditions causing distress, with the goal of preventing hospitalizations and unnecessary interactions with law enforcement; and,
- To implement a network of services so that when a youth requires a higher or lower level of intervention, the movement within the levels of services and between levels of care is not disrupted or delayed by the need to arrange for provision of services and care or locate appropriate placements that include or can accommodate the provision of services and care.
Objectives
The Proposal must demonstrate how information will be communicated and shared across the continuum in the proposed pilot program and how local service providers will work together to coordinate and provide all services, with the following objectives:
- Maintain foster youth in family-based settings, including stabilization when appropriate, within those settings;
- Transition foster youth between levels of care according to a current assessment of needs, and then back into the community, without interruption in services, to include ensuring continuity of educational services;
- Building out community-based crisis response services and intensive services placement settings, especially in regions where there is a scarcity of these resources;
- Work to develop high quality inpatient treatment, especially in regions where no inpatient treatment is currently available;
- Evaluate whether these programs are working as planned and adjust and improve the design, the coordination, and the delivery of services.
- Ensure provision of medically necessary mental health and/or substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery services.
Priorities
Eligibility shall be prioritized for foster youth who are:
- Experiencing a mental health crisis and/or substance use disorder crisis
- In need of highly individualized stabilization services
- Who require inpatient treatment in a secure, highly individualized, therapeutic setting
- In need of support to step down to less restrictive placements from an acute treatment setting
- In need of intensive transition planning and aftercare services, consisting of, at a minimum, a mental health professional, a support counselor and a peer partner.
Funding Information
The funding for this pilot has been created based on an estimated maximum allocation of $10 million dollars per pilot.
Eligibility Criteria
- In order to qualify to participate in the Children’s Crisis Continuum Pilot Program, the Applicant must be an individual county or a regional collaborative of counties. For individual counties applying, the lead county Applicant will be the county itself. For regional collaboratives of counties, the collaborative must designate a single county to be the lead county Applicant.
- The lead county Applicant shall be responsible for designating a county entity to lead the application and implementation process from one of the following entities: the county child welfare department, the county behavioral health department and/or the county mental health plan, or the probation department.
- The Applicant must provide a letter of support from their county’s Interagency Leadership Team (ILT). If the Applicant is a regional collaborative of counties, they must provide a letter of support from the ILT of each county that composes the regional collaborative.
For more information, visit https://cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/childrenscrisiscontinuumpilotprogram
