Youth Empowerment Services (YES) Newsletter
July 24, 2024
The YES newsletter will bring you the latest updates on Idaho's Youth Empowerment Services (YES) system of care for children's mental health. Keep your eyes on your inbox! Please share with anyone who you think would be interested in receiving regular updates.
Articles In This Edition
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For more information about YES, please visit YES.idaho.gov.
By: Jessica Divine
Up to 80% of children in foster care experience significant mental health issues, compared to approximately 18-22% in the general population according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This disparity highlights the need for specialized support within the child welfare system.
Children in foster care often face complex trauma, frequent transitions, broken family relationships, and limited or inconsistent access to mental health services – all significant contributors to mental and behavioral health challenges. Recognizing this, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) is prioritizing focus on strengthening child welfare in Idaho.
“We must ensure that Idaho’s children are safe, loved, and cared for in permanent environments where they can flourish,” stated Alex Adams, the new IDHW Director, in his blog. “The best interest of Idaho’s children is the North Star that will guide our actions.”
Governor Little echoed this sentiment, emphasizing the unique needs of children in foster care: “There is no category of children more in need of protection than those in the child welfare system. Through no fault of their own, children in foster care in Idaho face enormous challenges. They need our support, and so do the foster families who step up to care for them, love them, and provide them safety.”
The Promoting Families and Protecting Children Act aims to accelerate these improvements. Along side this legislation, IDHW has taken several initial actions:
These initiatives, along with the Promoting Families and Protecting Children Act, hold promise for strengthening the child welfare system in Idaho. By creating a more supportive environment for both children and foster families, IDHW’s efforts can contribute to improved mental health outcomes for children in foster care.
By: Jon Meyer
On July 1, the YES.idaho.gov website was updated extensively to reflect the implementation of the new Idaho Behavioral Health Plan (IBHP) administered by Magellan Healthcare.
The IBHP was overhauled to better reflect the state’s behavioral health goals, meeting the needs of Idahoans with mental health conditions and substance use disorders.
The new IBHP:
- Adds resources to Idaho’s crisis services, creating more opportunities to help Idahoans at their most vulnerable moments,
- Increases information sharing across provider services to improve care, and
- Improves service coordination by bringing inpatient, outpatient, and residential behavioral health services from Medicaid and the Division of Behavioral Health under the IBHP umbrella for the first time.
For the YES website, 40 existing documents were updated, and text was changed on more than 20 individual pages. Updated documents largely maintained their original web links, so there would be minimal disruption to bookmarks that visitors may have saved. While the digital versions will be updated, any physical copies of these documents printed before July 1, 2024, will need to be reprinted with the new content.
This document outlines the changes to the webpages, updated documents, changed links, and plans for future updates.
If you have any questions or would like to be informed of upcoming changes discussed in the document as they are made, e-mail Jonathan.Meyer@dhw.idaho.gov.
For more information about the new Idaho Behavioral Health Plan, you can also visit Magellan Healthcare’s website, MagellanofIdaho.com.
By: Liv LuVisi, Community Relations Specialist - Avery's House
Idaho youth with mental health diagnoses or substance use disorders may now go to Avery’s House in Boise, a Residential Treatment Center (RTC). Youth aged 12-17 stay at Avery’s House on average 4-to-6 weeks, with 24-hour care.
An RTC lets youth pursue therapy in a safe, sober space, away from the stressors of their home environment. *This is a private facility, so youth and their families do need private insurance; they cannot bill Medicaid.
There weren’t really options before. A lot of these kids would have to go out of state. Families don’t want to send their 12-year-old to California or Utah. We’re heavily focused on the therapeutic side of treatment during their stay, whether that’s trauma, severe depression, or another underlying concern. We address the substance use or mental health components, whatever they might be.
The residential treatment level of care provided by Avery’s House can be accessed by youth across the continuum of care. When seeking treatment, a family will often begin on an outpatient basis, where a youth visits with a professional, completes assessments, creates a treatment plan, and charts a path toward recovery. However, if the struggle is too great at home or school in a youth’s day-to-day life, Avery’s House may be an option. On the other end of the continuum of care, Avery’s House is accessible to youth discharging from inpatient stabilization.
It’s been amazing to see these kids get back to being kids. A lot of them feel like adults, and we want them to feel like kids again.
For more information, visit averyshouseidaho.com or call (208) 972-3309.
By: Kyle Hanson
A new version of the Child Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) tool launched on July 1, 2024. You can view a short video for an introduction to this new version here.
First implemented in 2015, this information integration tool helps system partners address the needs and strengths of children, youth, and families. The Idaho CANS helps the YES system of care identify and deliver appropriate services to youth and families through a shared vision of success. The Idaho CANS supports decision making and service planning based on actionable levels of care identified for each individual youth and family.
We are grateful for the many parents, providers, and other partners who helped develop this new version!
Additionally, Magellan of Idaho, our new managed care coordinator, has implemented a new outcomes and assessments platform called Person Centered Intelligence Solutions (P-CIS) that will enhance and improve the use of the CANS. More information on this platform will be featured in future editions of this newsletter. Live and on demand trainings are available on the Magellan of Idaho website.
By: Amy Balzer
The System, Design, and Implementation Children’s Mental Health (SDI-CMH) team is always seeking services and programs to fill gaps within Idaho. One SDI-CMH Clinician was able to attend the 57th Annual American Association of Suicidology Conference this past May 2024. A major takeaway from this conference was information shared about a free online resource for families known as Family Connections™ Managing Suicidality & Trauma Recovery (FC-MSTR) Program.
This evidence-based program is offered to parents grappling with overwhelming fear, distress, and desperation that naturally follows a child's suicide attempt and/or severe emotion dysregulation. Empowering parents with knowledge, support, and skills to effectively support their child following a suicide attempt is paramount. It is estimated that 50-80% of parents who have experienced a child’s suicide attempt meet the criteria for PTSD. The FC-MSTR program, created by Alan Fruzzetti, Ph.D., Luciana Payne, Ph.D., and Cynthia Kaplan, Ph.D., seeks to empower parents with education, skills, and support to effectively address their significant stress, fear, or trauma-related issues due to their child's suicide attempt, non-suicidal self-harm, or other dangerous behaviors.
The FC-MSTR program addresses the critical needs of parents dealing with suicidality in their children. By combining educational material, support spaces, and DBT skills, this program emerges as a vital resource for improving family environments and fostering well-being and resilience. The program creates a community space for parents to collectively pause, learn how to accurately identify their emotions, prioritize self-care, and significantly reduce their own fear conditioning and stress response. Its proactive peer-to-peer approach enables individuals to learn and heal from suffering created by acute trauma and PTSD. It creates opportunities for parents with similar stories to bear witness to the painful experiences of their peers and to provide empathy and validation evidenced to reduce trauma. In essence, FC-MSTR honors those who have been transformed and impacted by suicidality and offers them a path to create lives worth living.
This evidenced-based course provides education, skills, and support for parents and is offered in two formats: once a week in three-hour blocks for eight weeks or as a 2-day weekend intensive. To view upcoming dates, enroll, or find more information here.
By: Dustin Lapray
The word, acceptance (like awareness), comes with its own stigma. It infers that something is wrong, and it needs to be accepted. It’s a buzzword that helps us breach difficult topics, but also can mislead the public. Instead, we may focus on the unique young people in our state, whose illness is unlike that of any other person.
A youth may have a biological condition, or an illness brought about by environment or accidents, or even malice. Treatment, care, welcoming, and safety are paramount to better mental health for children.
To honor Children’s Mental Health Acceptance Week (the second week of May each year) the Families & Youth of Idaho (FYIdaho) hosted an event to help providers, parents and youth in education, advocacy, and mental health care navigation in Idaho.
The event took place on the lawn and sidewalk outside the Boise Brick House, the FYIdaho offices in downtown Boise. A dozen Treasure Valley behavioral health providers hosted tables and shared information on the windy Wednesday afternoon.
“We wanted to bring together a bunch of community partners, families, the youth we serve, to collaborate and see how we can partner together,” said FYIdaho Executive Director Brenda Wilson. “We have raffles from amazing people in the community, donors who have helped, and people who can donate to the cause.”
Staff was on site to give tours of the Brick House, an actual house that has been converted into a safe place for youth, with a kitchen, study, and play areas. There was even a giant inflatable brain, showing the negative effects of vaping (a rising addiction among young people in Idaho).
To learn more about FYIdaho, and how you can help youth in Idaho, visit fyidaho.org or email info@fyidaho.org.
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