RELEASE: January 24, 2000

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Governor Christine Todd Whitman today announced plans to restructure the systems that serve children with emotional and behavioral disturbances and announced a four-year commitment that will increase spending for treatment by $113 million over four years – from $167 million to $280 million.

The Governor announced that an additional $39 million will be spent in the state fiscal year 2001 budget to increase community-based treatment for troubled children and to launch a dramatic reworking of how children’s services are funded and coordinated. She said funding would continue to increase as the reforms are implemented over a four-year period.

The principal elements of this reform plan include:

• increasing funding for services;

• expanding the array of services available to children close to home;

• creating a comprehensive and accountable management system to manage and coordinate care across systems;

• building service plans around the needs of the child and giving families a greater say in their child’s treatment.

"This plan is innovative, compassionate and a broad in scope," said Whitman. "For far too long, too many troubled children and their families have had too few options to receive appropriate care. Now is the time to try to reform our child-serving systems."

"This concept envisions a system where children get the services they need, when and where they need them – without waiting lists or eligibility barriers," said New Jersey Department of Human Services Commissioner Michele K. Guhl. "The plan we are announcing today is a blueprint for massive reform that focuses on children and families’ needs."

The Department of Human Services yesterday released a concept paper that outlines its reform plans and is seeking public input on the plan. In February and March, a series of public meetings on the plan will be held throughout the state. Later in the spring, the department expects to seek bids for a contract entity to manage the services currently delivered to troubled children and to expand existing services.

The Initiative covers all children with emotional and behavioral disturbances who enter publicly funded systems from ages 0-18. The Initiative also covers youth 18-21 who may be transitioning to the adult system.

"We are very excited about the prospect of this major reform effort," said Katherine Wagner, head of the Parent’s Caucus, a support and advocacy group for parents of children with emotional or behavioral disturbances. "We are particularly gratified that families will finally have an equal voice in how their child receives care and treatment, and that care from all of the many systems will be coordinated."

Children's advocates have long identified the need for fundamental changes in the way the state provides services to children with emotional and behavioral problems and their families.

Too often, these troubled children and their families either don't get the services they need. That is in part because many of the independent systems serving children – including the Division of Youth and Family Services, the Division of Mental Health Services, Medicaid and the juvenile justice and educational systems -- were not always coordinated with each other.

Most of the resources devoted to this area tend to be focused on the most restrictive and expensive services -- like psychiatric hospitalization and residential treatment and not on preventive services like in-home services, family support and mobile crisis outreach in the community.

Moreover, there is not currently a single entity responsible for coordinating care for children who require the services of several different agencies.

The Children’s System of Care concept calls for pooling resources from DYFS, Mental Health and Medicaid, investing new resources and managing those resources so that services are expanded and tailored to the individual child. By establishing a single systems administrator to process children, the state will be able to coordinate services for children with multiple needs.

The following are the highlights of the concept:

• A major expansion and redistribution of funds for children’s services that would place greater emphasis on preventing children's problems from escalating, by providing a wider array of services that can be delivered in the home or in the child's community.

• Pooling resources currently supporting many children’s programs – in the DYFS, Mental Health and Medicaid budgets -- and managing those resources, through a Systems Administrator, so that services are expanded and can be tailored to the individual child.

• Offering quick access to a broader array of services and resources than are currently available and making families a critical part of the child’s planning process.
  

• Preserving the child's ties to family, school and community and allowing families to be partners in planning for the child's recovery. The concept also envisions developing independent family-run organizations under contract with DHS to provide family support and foster active participation in treatment planning.

• Requiring all child-serving agencies to utilize common screening and assessment tools and establishing a virtual single point of processing by creating an overarching administrative body, a Contracted System Administrator (CSA) , that registers and tracks and coordinates care for children who are screened into the system at any level. This CSA will be an agent of state government, contcated by and accountable to DHS.
  

• Requiring the Contracted System Administrator to work hand-in-hand with local Care-Management Organizations (CMOs) that will be responsible for identifying and arranging local services and community resources for children requiring the most intensive services. While the Contracted Systems Administrator and the CMOs will manage services, they will have no financial incentive to restrict care.

• Increasing overall funding for the children’s system of care by dramatically increasing state funding and increasing the amount of federal funds for which the state is eligible under Medicaid.
  
  For FY 2001, the state envisions spending an additional $10 million and drawing down an additional $29 million in federal funds. The state currently spends about $167 million to support programs for this population. This concept envisions managing about $280 million to support these programs when fully implemented.