Several ACEs Connection members should be feeling proud about now. Karen Clemmer, Carla Denner, Jessica Hackwell, Nick Dalton, and several others joined the 4CA Campaign to educate legislators about ACEs and trauma. Our partners with First 5, Maternal Child Adolescent Health, and the County Board of Supervisors also wrote letters to state policy makers urging consideration of a bill requiring trauma screenings for all children who receive MediCal support.
And....drum roll please... As of October 13, this bill was signed into law!
Our next steps will be to find funding to train all providers in ACEs screening and to find funding to insure our referral options are robust. Meredith K. of Santa Rosa Community Health is leading the way in Sonoma County. Meredith and team screened more than 8,000 patients in the past two years. Meredith continually shares resources and best practices with her clinic colleagues across the County. (See her PowerPoint here.)
The key phrasing of the new Assembly Bill 340 is:
An act to add Section 14132.19 to the Welfare and Institutions Code, relating to Medi-Cal.
[ Approved by Governor October 12, 2017. Filed with Secretary of State October 12, 2017. ]
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 340, Arambula. Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Program: trauma screening.
...This bill would require the department, in consultation with the State Department of Social Services and others, to convene, by May 1, 2018, an advisory working group to update, amend, or develop, if appropriate, tools and protocols for screening children for trauma as defined, within the EPSDT benefit, as specified. The bill would require this group to report its findings and recommendations, as well as any appropriations necessary to implement those recommendations, to the department and to the Legislature’s budget subcommittees on health and human services no later than May 1, 2019, and would provide that this group would be disbanded on December 31, 2019. The bill would also require, on or before May 1, 2019, the department to identify an existing advisory working group to periodically review and consider the protocols for the screening of trauma in children at least once every 5 years, or upon the request of the department. The bill would authorize the department to implement, interpret, or make specific these provisions by means of all-county letters, plan letters, or plan or provider bulletins, as specified.
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