Recommendation: Access to effective home- and community-based services
What Parents Said...
And there just hasn’t been a lot of support
or recognition. It’s like, if they’re not starting fires
or doing this, then okay. They’re okay. (Oregon)
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The staff at the [health plan don’t
know what they cover. Everybody has a different answer sometimes.
At the place that you go to, they may think a different thing than
the people that you call at the insurance company. (Oregon)
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I’m trying to tell them now that children
don’t normally bite themselves and pull their own hair out.
And my daughter’s doing this and no one will listen. She’s
four. And nobody will listen. (Oregon)
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Issues relating to children with serious mental disorders are not now
a priority for public mental health systems. Most public systems are adult-focused
and most of their resources are allocated to services for adults. The
dismal picture of denial of access, extraordinarily inadequate levels
of service and lack of appropriate evidence-based services painted by
the parents in our focus groups strongly suggests the urgent need for
far more attention to reforming children’s mental health systems.
States should ensure that the appropriate array of intensive community
mental health services is actually available to children with mental health
needs. Children must receive a level and a range of services sufficient
to improve their conditions. The most critical of these services are intensive
in-home services, therapeutic foster care, mentors, multi-systemic therapy,
day treatment, case management and family education to manage the child’s
disability. Each of these services is cited as effective in the Surgeon
General’s report on mental illness.
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