Psychiatric Disabilities/Mental Illness

The Formative Evaluation of the Real Choice Systems Change Grants evaluates how the Systems Change grantees are progressing towards meeting their goals. The Formative Evaluation identifies problems faced by the grantees and ways that they deal with the problems. This document provides summary information about each of the FY2004 Grantees.

The CMS Systems Change conference was February 28-March 2, 2005. Presentations from the 2005 sessions are available in both PDF and text formats. Topics range from ideas on sustaining systems change, employment services, Medicaid, integrating quality, policy implications and barriers to providing services. Full titles are listed in the keywords section.

Self-determination is a growing force for persons with psychiatric disabilities. Advances in technology and services, the recognition that recovery is a reality, combined with the consumer movement motto, “nothing about us without us” all pave the way for persons with psychiatric disabilities to live self-determined lives. This NMHA report outlines many of the barriers to this movement and makes recommendations and next steps.

The information in this paper supports the President's New Freedom Initiative initiative by describing how a state might use the Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability (HIFA) waiver option under Section 1115 authority to improve access to community-based services for persons with mental illness. These services can include basic health care coverage, enhanced community-based supports, and provisions to encourage the use of employer-sponsored insurance (ESI).

Collaboration between state Medicaid and Mental Health programs has varied greatly across states and administrations. The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe the basic elements of successful collaboration through 1) a review of the literature on collaboration, and 2) a description of collaboration in two states. The state examples highlight the mechanisms through which successful collaboration occurs and describe the types of activities in which collaborating agencies engage.

These briefs have been developed to assist the CMS Real Choice grantees who are focusing on strengthening systems of care for children and adolescents with severe emotional disturbances. Five briefs are included in the set. The briefs focus on assessment of children, therapeutic foster care, wraparound services, flexible funding, and multisystemic therapy.

The Compendium contains basic information about each of the Real Choice Systems Change Grantees. The Compendium will help you learn more about how these grants will be used to allow more people of all ages with a disability or long term illness to live and participate in their communities. Real Choice Systems Change Grantees will also find the Compendium useful to identify other Grantees with similar goals and activities. The fourth edition of the Compendium replaces all previous editions.

This guide profiles 15 successful programs that have partnered with community organizations to address medication, alcohol and mental health problems in older adults by promoting new linkages between well-known, trusted, and heavily utilized providers of aging services and relevant substance abuse and mental health services. By joining these systems, we can more successfully identify older adults who are at risk and connect them with the prevention, education, outreach, and treatment services.

This brief summarizes presentations made at NASHP’s 17th annual state health policy conference during a session on “Promoting Young Children’s Healthy Mental Development.” The session focused on the evidence base, state program highlights, a discussion of the ABCD program, and ways to use the Medicaid program to better support early childhood social and emotional development. Thie brief is available from the Assuring Better Child Health and Development initiative (ABCD II).

NCHSD held its 4th Annual National Fall Technical Assistance Conference for Medicaid Infrastructure Grantees. This year’s meeting featured pre-conference regional gatherings, a day-long session on building public-private partnerships with employers, updates from our CMS partners, and a series of state expert panel presentations. Attached are the Fall 2004 Conference Edition eNews with highlights and promising practices plus the conference materials and presentations from every session.