Starting in January 1996, the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, Albany, N.Y. developed a method—through the education, social services, juvenile justice, and mental health systems—to purchase and manage individualized services for seriously emotionally disturbed children and adolescents to divert them from unnecessary placements and hospitalizations.

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

Key Results:

• Through this work, known as the Kids Oneida project and located in Oneida County, N.Y., a local interagency steering committee was established. The committee chose to replicate a model that combined funding streams through a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit care management entity and used them to purchase both service coordination and direct wraparound services through a provider network.
• Child and family teams developed individualized service plans that authorized services on a monthly basis.
• A not-for-profit care management entity, Integrated Community Alternatives Network, Utica, N.Y., was established to administer the Kids Oneida project.
• Initial funding for Kids Oneida was provided under contracts between the local departments of social services and mental health and Integrated Community Alternatives Network for individualized wraparound plans.
• Workgroups helped the local steering committee and demonstrated the cooperative spirit in Oneida County.
  • Some 37 individuals, parents, advocates, and staff of neighborhood organizations, public agencies, and private providers, volunteered significant amounts of time to study and develop recommendations to address important facets of the new system of care, such as parent involvement, outcomes and services, cultural competency, policies and procedures, and network development.
  • The workgroups hammered together the framework for the new system of care, which involved the development of a care management entity and an 11-provider network.
  • As of the writing of this report, the state-interagency agreement to develop a blended funding pool had not been executed.
  • A cost-based prepayment plan was established that permits the county Department of Social Services to advance a per-child per-month amount to Integrated Community Alternatives Network, to be reconciled on a quarterly basis.

Afterward: Kids Oneida enrolled its first clients on November 1, 1997, five months after the grant ended. The plan was expected to enroll 8 to 10 children per month.