Implications for Public Policy
What Parents Said...
They set really high criteria. If your child
doesn’t meet everything, then they just don’t offer that
service to you. But your child could have one or two of the warning
signs, and they haven’t escalated to that. They don’t
want to nip it in the bud. They want to wait until they’re
really bad. (Oregon)
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These two states have defined a relatively strong mental health benefit
for children in their Medicaid plans. New York and Oregon are also among
the states that allocate significant resources to public mental health
services, ranking 2nd and 18th respectively in per-capita spending on
mental health nationally.9 Despite differences
in the organization of the states’ Medicaid programs (fee-for-service
in New York, managed care in Oregon), the issues recounted by families
in both states were remarkably similar. If what the parents in the focus
group had to say is indicative of the plight of most children with serious
mental disorders in these two state Medicaid programs, there is good reason
to believe that families in other states experience similar problems in
accessing needed services.
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