A new report from Young Minds Advocacy makes the case that the publicly funded mental health system for children in California needs a shake up.
Released last week to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month, the report argues that California needs to adopt a comprehensive vision of children’s mental health. Responsibility for the mental health needs of California’s most vulnerable children is spread out among a Byzantine system of federal and state funding streams and child-serving agencies. As a result, the coordination of care spread amongst an array of different mental health programs is often challenging, according to Patrick Gardner, president of Young Minds Advocacy.
In California’s Children and Youths’ System of Care: An Agenda to Transform Promises Into Practice, Gardner estimates that more than one quarter of a million eligible California children with serious mental health needs failed to receive Medi-Cal assistance and that only 17 percent of the eligible special education students receive mental health services as part of their individualized education plans (IEPs).
[For more of this story, written by Jeremy Loudenback, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...are-california/26841]
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