The California Children’s Trust and First 5 Center for Children’s Policy just announced the publication of their vision for a new approach for California to conceptualize, deliver, and fund a system of care—grounded in family wellness—for Medi-Cal eligible infants and toddlers.
Whole-Family Wellness for Early Childhood: A New Model for Medi-Cal Delivery and Financing was developed by The California Children’s Trust and the First 5 Center for Children's Policy. The primary authors are Ken Epstein, Ph.D, LCSW, Clinical Professor, UCSF Department of Psychiatry; Alicia F. Lieberman, Ph.D, Irving B. Harris Endowed Chair in Infant Mental Health and Professor, UCSF Department of Psychiatry; Alex Briscoe, MA, Principal, California Children’s Trust; and Nila Rosen, MPH, Director of Special Projects, California’s Children Trust.
The hard reality of California’s children’s mental health crisis is nowhere more apparent than in access rates for early childhood—the lowest of any age group in EPSDT specialty mental health. Epstein and Lieberman helped develop this model of care that could better serve California families. The model shows how to bring public financing to the challenges of early childhood family support, cohesion, and dyadic models. The model also combines the Trust’s frame of behavioral health as a tool for equity and justice, a belief in the power of leveraging the lived experience of children and families, and an understanding of Medicaid finance.
It is meant to spark conversations about how to work together to make systems change happen.
Here's a link to the report.
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