By Dave Ranney
The Governor’s Behavioral Health Services Planning Council has taken the first step in what it hopes will be a yearlong experiment.
Council members heard from four people:
A 34-year-old woman whose mother’s boyfriends molested her throughout her childhood, who has battled drug addiction, who spent four years in prison and who recently was reunited with her teenage daughter.
A mother whose 12-year-old twin girls are autistic, exhibit aggressive behaviors and have been suspended from school on several occasions. The mother does not speak English.
An 18-year-old student at Kansas State University whose mental illness led to her being institutionalized 21 times in the past seven years — including a recent four-day stay at Osawatomie State Hospital — and who’s now struggling to stay in school.
A now-divorced father whose 8-year-old adopted twins have mental illnesses and exhibit behaviors that may prevent them from being allowed to enroll in public school next year.
A year from now, the speakers will let the planning council know if their children’s circumstances have improved, worsened or remained the same.
Council members, in the meantime, will develop recommendations to improve the state’s approach of providing services for children and families affected by mental illness.
Their recommendations eventually will be forwarded to the governor’s office and shared with the Kansas State Department of Education, Department for Aging and Disability Services, and Department for Children and Families.
“The purpose here today is to talk about what happens in a life and how service will impact that life,” said Jane Adams, executive director of Keys for Networking and a member of the planning council. She is coordinating the yearlong experiment.
Keys for Networking is a Topeka-based programs that advocates on behalf of families with children with disabilities.
A sampling of council member recommendations:
Allow children, especially those exiting the state’s foster care system, to continue seeing their therapists after they turn 18.
Stop asking whether a child is receiving services and instead ask whether the services are effectively meeting the child’s needs.
Give children a say in deciding which services they receive.
Be quick in allowing children to switch therapists if they don’t like the one they’ve been assigned.
Reduce caseworker, counselor and therapist caseloads so they can spend more time with the children in their care.
Encourage the blending of physical health services, behavioral health services and suicide prevention.
Council members include parents, teachers, school administrators, consumers, mental health professionals and advocates.
“There are a lot of issues out there that we all know we need to be dealing with, but at the same time we kind of get the feeling that we’re in this alone,” said Steve Woolf, the school superintendent in Erie. “Today was an opportunity for us to come together, to start addressing these issues.
“We all know we need to be coming up with better ideas,” he said. “We have an idea problem, not a money problem. The money problem is always going to be there.”
KDADS Secretary Kari Bruffett also addressed the group. The department, she said, recognizes the importance of focusing treatment plans on families, not just on children.
“We know that families are essential to successfully delivering services to children,” Bruffett said.
In the next few weeks, she said, the department will convene a Children’s Continuum of Care Committee, similar to a panel it formed to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the state’s mental health system for adults.