During 1994 and 1995, staff at the State of Minnesota Department of Human Services implemented state policy and administrative support systems for facilitating the development of Minnesota Children's Health Collaboratives-Integrated Fund Initiative (MHIF).

The Initiative was mandated by state legislation to redirect spending patterns and maximize federal entitlement reimbursement for children's mental health services in Minnesota.

The project was part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Mental Health Services Program for Youth (MHSPY) Replication national program.

Key Results:

• The concept and process of wraparound services was accepted as the standard whereby individualized child and family services would best be provided. More than 1,000 persons—including parents, private providers as well as public social workers, public health staff, corrections staff, educators and case managers—were trained in the wraparound process.
• The Department of Human Services combined more than $6.5 million in grants to counties and collaboratives to facilitate flexible funds at the local level.
  
  In addition, $3 million was provided to meet the needs of children and adolescents through the restructuring of the federal Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982. (The Inpatient Psychiatric Hospitalization TEFRA option allows young people with severe emotional disturbances who need institutional care to receive home and community-based mental health services through Medicaid reimbursement.)
• An agreement with the federal government resulted in $15 million being placed in the local collaboratives's integrated fund to expand prevention and early intervention services for children and families in order to reduce out-of-home placements.