Pritzker launches children’s behavioral health initiative
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[February 25, 2023]
By PETER HANCOCK
Capitol News Illinois
phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – Citing what he called a nationwide crisis in children’s
mental health, Gov. JB Pritzker on Friday unveiled a sweeping plan to
overhaul and expand the availability of children’s behavioral health
services in Illinois.
“Long before COVID-19 turned our world upside down, our nation was
facing a mental health crisis,” Pritzker said at an event at the West40
Regional Safe School in the west Chicago suburb of Maywood. “Nearly one
in five children experienced a mental health disorder, from depression
to anxiety to ADHD. But only 20 percent of them received the behavioral
health care that they needed.”
In March of last year, Pritzker launched what was called the Children's
Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative, a project that involved six
state agencies and other outside entities that deal with children’s
mental health. Its task was to build a coordinated, interagency approach
to ensuring young people with significant behavioral health needs
receive the community and residential services they need.
The results of that effort were released in a recent report that
examined data from multiple state agencies to assess the need for
services, determine which populations are most affected by the crisis
and come up with a plan for coordinating state resources to meet those
needs.
“It's a blueprint for transformation of the behavioral health system for
Illinois’ youth,” Pritzker said. “This is an unprecedented interagency
effort that will provide more and better treatment and save lives.”
Although a recent study by Mental Health America found Illinois ranks
13th-best overall on a set of factors related to youth mental health
care, the Transformation Initiative analysis found that 40 percent of
young people in Illinois who experienced major depressive episodes were
unable to receive mental health care.
Youth in care of the Department of Children and Family Services who need
inpatient residential treatment for their condition are
disproportionately Black, the report found. As well, the report found a
quarter of all the beds at residential treatment facilities are
unavailable due to understaffing.
It also found that the state has a fragmented system of delivering
mental and behavioral health services, with different state agencies
providing services under different standards and often paying different
reimbursement rates for similar services.
“Multiple state agencies operate programs that provide services to
support children’s behavioral health, but there is minimal systematic
coordination and no holistic, developmentally informed approach to
meeting youth needs,” the report stated. “With no central point of entry
to help families navigate, children and families must access services
differently across agencies, meet agency-specific eligibility
requirements, and maintain access to services with minimal supports.”
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Gov. JB Pritzker speaks at an event in
Maywood Friday, unveiling a new report focusing on children's mental
health. (Credit: Illinois.gov)
To address that issue, Pritzker said, the Transformation Initiative
developed and pilot tested a new online portal where people seeking
assistance for youth could connect with the services they need. He
described it as “a kind of a front door for stakeholders seeking
assistance for youth with the greatest needs.”
As of Jan. 30, after only a few months of operation, Pritzker said,
41 percent of the cases that came through that portal had already
been connected with interventions, placements and services.
“So with a successful pilot underway and under our belt, we are now
going to build out this more robust care portal for children and
families seeking behavioral health services,” he said. “And we're
adding to it a hotline for assistance and specialized guidance for
those beginning the process of accessing care.”
The Transformation Initiative report also spells several other
recommendations for improving services. Those include standardizing
reimbursement rates for services so providers are compensated
consistently; offering universal screening in schools and health
care settings for behavioral health problems so they are detected
early; and expanding eligibility for current programs and developing
new service types.
“Our ability to provide the behavioral health support that we
desperately need for our kids and adults hinges on growing our
behavioral healthcare workforce. We have to do it,” state Rep.
Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago, a former social worker, said during the
event.
As part of his budget proposal released last week, Pritzker asked
for $22.8 million to begin to fund and implement the Transformation
Initiative’s recommendations.
Also on Friday, Pritzker signed an executive order establishing a
new office of Children's Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative
Chief to lead the interagency effort to implement that plan. At the
event in Maywood, he announced that Dana Weiner, a child welfare
expert at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall who chaired the
Transformation Initiative, would fill that role.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service
covering state government. It is distributed to more than 400
newspapers statewide, as well as hundreds of radio and TV stations.
It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the
Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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