A Busy Day: I missed my chance to see the Team in Action

Got this from the CBHI today:

August 18, 2009
Over 1,000 Families Enrolled in ICC Services!
On June 30th, Community Service Agencies (CSAs), the organizations that deliver Intensive Care Coordination and Family Support and Training, began providing services to children, youth and their families. Since that time, the MassHealth Health Plans have reported over 1,000 families are in the beginning stages of working with Intensive Care Coordination services. During the beginning “engagement” phase of this service, families work with Care Coordinators and Family Partners to complete a “strengths and needs” discovery and start building their child’s ICC Team. In the experience of Wraparound programs nationally, as well as CFFC and MHSPY in Massachusetts, some number of families will decide during this process that ICC is not for their family. CBHI will begin to have data in September on the number of families that enroll beyond the engagement phase. Intensive Care Coordination (ICC) is a care-coordination service for children and youths with serious emotional disturbance (SED). Children, teens and young people most likely to benefit from ICC services may include: those with complex needs involving many providers or state agencies; families of children or youth who have frequent behavioral health crises; and children or youth in families that have been “difficult to engage” in other services.

I know this to be true- as I mentioned last week, I got invited to one of those meetings myself. During the day. When I had patients. So I couldn't go.
Mental health figured prominently into today's patients: a young man with ADHD and an untreated substance abuse problem heading off to college; we had a long talk about weed and apathy and the possibilities of drinking and drugs in teh big city (I won't say which one!). Another youth, repeating 9th grade, whose ADHD is unresponsive to medication because it doesn't work ("I don't feel any different") or because he doesn't take it very often (last Rx was in December, although he claims to be on the stuff). Neither of them is seeing a therapist; both have one parent in MA and one in CT, making it tricky to sort out which mental health system to access. These kids are hard to manage, and I truly look forward to having a CSA with whom to work.