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Supporting Youths in Their Recovery Journey to Adulthood
The New York State children’s behavioral health community is in the last stages of redesigning the children’s behavioral health Medicaid benefits. Once approved by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare (CMS), the new benefits will represent the most significant expansion of children’s...
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Youth in Transition
This article is the third in a quarterly series giving voice to the perspectives of individuals with lived experiences as they share their opinions on a particular topic. The young authors of this column came together as a focus group of peers to discuss their experiences and collaborate on this...
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Re-Visioning Residential Treatment Facilities in a Managed Care World
It wasn’t long ago that the only options available for intensive treatment of children and youth with severe emotional and behavioral problems were inpatient hospitals or residential care. Before the creation and expansion of community-based mental health services, some children spent many months...
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The NYSPA Report: Transforming Systems of Care for Children
Children’s mental health needs are widespread and treatment is often limited and inadequate. Epidemiologic studies report that 20% of children and adolescents have a psychiatric disorder, and 10% have severe impairment. This translates to 1 million children and adolescents in New York State with...
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Transforming NJ’s System of Care Through Collaborative Efforts
A system of care is a big picture approach to how, when, and where services and supports are offered. The System of Care approach to service delivery for children began in the 1990s as communities were looking for ways to improve the well-being of children with serious emotional and behavioral...
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Integrating Screening Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) into School Based Health Centers (SBHCs)
Adolescence is a time of dramatic physical, mental and emotional growth and development but also a time when significant risks exist. Adolescence is the time when many youth begin to experiment with alcohol and other drugs (AOD). Research has shown the brain is still developing until age 25 and is...
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The State of Children’s Mental Health and Associated Costs of a Fragmented System
Past public policy has focused mostly on children’s mental health issues—and with good reason. While 1 out of 10 children has a serious emotional disturbance, only 20% ever receive treatment. Children with mental health issues have the highest school dropout rate among all disability groups,...
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Hurricane Sandy Kids Need Substance Abuse Services
The catastrophic destruction of property and psyche on Staten Island wrought by Hurricane Sandy last October devastated thousands of our residents. The monster waves and tidal surges that overwhelmed communities on the Island’s East and South Shores destroyed 500 homes, sweeping some completely...
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Early Childhood Social-Emotional Development: Building Healthy Foundations for A Lifetime of Success
A seminal publication in 2000 From Neurons to Neighborhoods, The Science of Early Childhood Development has established the importance of early childhood experiences on lifelong well-being (JP Shonkoff & DA Phillips, Eds., 2000). Ongoing research continues to demonstrate that the early years in...
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Treating Youth with Sexual Aggression: Stopping Predators? Or Meeting Needs?
For the last three decades, the Juvenile Starting Over (JSO) program at Westchester Jewish Community Services (WJCS) has been treating Youth with Sexual Aggression (YwSA). It is the only community-based program in the area specially designed to help these young people cease their problematic sexual...
