Address the urgent need for individualized, coordinated mental health care with this book--the only one-stop reference for establishing, evaluating, and improving services and systems of care for children and adolescents with mental health challenges and their families. The new cornerstone of the highly respected Systems of Care for Children's Mental Health series, this comprehensive volume helps administrators, program developers, and clinicians from mental health and partner child-serving systems skillfully navigate every key issue they may encounter on the road to effective service delivery. Weaving all the latest research and best practices into a single accessible handbook, more than 60 expert contributors give readers the in-depth, practical knowledge they need to develop comprehensive, community-based, coordinated systems of care for youth with mental health challenges and their families avoid duplication and fragmentation of services across mental health and other child-serving systems develop individualized care plans for children with complex needs and implement the "wraparound" approach to service delivery incorporate evidence-based practices into systems of care use smart financing strategies that make the most of multiple funding streams ensure the full participation of families and youth in service planning and delivery improve services and care coordination across a variety of systems--schools, child welfare, juvenile justice work effectively with youth and families from diverse backgrounds and communities conduct accurate program evaluation and continuous quality improvement use the best professional development strategies to ensure a skilled and dedicated workforce Throughout the book, extended case studies of children, youth, families, and successful programs take readers beyond the abstract and reveal in vivid detail how high-quality services can transform the lives of children and youth--from early childhood to their transition to adulthood--as well as their families and caregivers. A must-own compendium of knowledge for anyone involved in shaping the future of mental health services, this book is the new blueprint for systems of care that truly respond to the needs of children, youth and families. Learn more about the Systems of Care for Children's Mental Health series.

Described in the New York Times as “an astonishingly clear ‘user’s manual’ that explains our health care system and the policies that will change it,” The Health Care Handbook, by Drs. Elisabeth Askin and Nathan Moore, offers a practical, neutral, and readable overview of the U.S. health care system in a compact, convenient format. The fully revised third edition provides concise coverage on health care delivery, insurance and economics, policy, and reform—all critical components of the system in which health care professionals work. Written in a conversational and accessible tone, this popular, highly regarded handbook serves as a “one stop shop” for essential facts, systems, concepts, and analysis of the U.S. health care system, providing the tools you need to confidently evaluate current health care policy and controversies.

System Kids considers the daily lives of adolescent mothers as they negotiate the child welfare system to meet the needs of their children and themselves. Often categorized as dependent and delinquent, these young women routinely become wards of the state as they move across the legal and social borders of a fragmented urban bureaucracy. Combining critical policy study and ethnography, and drawing on current scholarship as well as her own experience as a welfare program manager, Lauren Silver demonstrates how social welfare "silos" construct the lives of youth as disconnected, reinforcing unforgiving policies and imposing demands on women the system was intended to help. As clients of a supervised independent living program, they are expected to make the transition into independent adulthood, but Silver finds a vast divide between these expectations and the young women's lived reality. Digging beneath the bureaucratic layers of urban America and bringing to light the daily experiences of young mothers and the caseworkers who assist them, System Kids illuminates the ignored work and personal ingenuity of clients and caseworkers alike. Ultimately reflecting on how her own understanding of the young women has changed in the years since she worked in the same social welfare program that is the focus of the book, Silver emphasizes the importance of empathy in research and in the formation of welfare policies.

A collection of essays dealing with the health care system.

This edited volume captures and communicates the best thinking on how to improve healthcare by improving the delivery of services -- providing care when and where it is needed most -- through application of state-of-the-art scheduling systems. Over 12 chapters, the authors cover aspects of setting appointments, allocating healthcare resources, and planning to ensure that capacity matches needs for care. A central theme of the book is increasing healthcare efficiency so that both the cost of care is reduced and more patients have access to care. This can be accomplished through reduction of idle time, lessening the time needed to provide services and matching resources to the needs where they can have the greatest possible impact on health. Within their chapters, authors address: (1) Use of scheduling to improve healthcare efficiency. (2) Objectives, constraints and mathematical formulations. (3) Key methods and techniques for creating schedules. (4) Recent developments that improve the available problem solving methods. (5) Actual applications, demonstrating how the methods can be used. (6) Future directions in which the field of research is heading. Collectively, the chapters provide a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of models and methods for scheduling the delivery of patient care for all parts of the healthcare system. Chapter topics include setting appointments for ambulatory care and outpatient procedures, surgical scheduling, nurse scheduling, bed management and allocation, medical supply logistics and routing and scheduling for home healthcare.

One in five U.S. adults experiences a mental illness within a given year. With more than 550,000 people working to support this underserved community, the mental healthcare system has grappled with inadequacies and shortcomings in safety, quality, and care delivery. There is a wide range of problems, from access-to-care issues and errors, to complications stemming from poor care. Our country is also on an unsustainable path as our healthcare expenditure keeps growing. To add to all of this, we are facing a rampant epidemic of burnout among healthcare workers. Modern advancements introduced with many promises—such as electronic medical records, newer medications, or advanced treatments—have created unique challenges when ushered into a highly regulated healthcare system. What does it take to provide patients with everything they need—the right quality of care, at the right time, and at the right cost—to keep them healthy? Which process steps add value? Which steps are wasteful? A widely accepted fact is that a conservative 30-50% of every step in the mental healthcare process does not help patients feel better or stay better. When considering delays in care, workarounds, excessive documentation, and an overuse of auditing, the care system has moved highly skilled clinicians away from providing value, as administrative tasks continue to encroach on their time. There is a clear need to rethink and redesign the system of care. This book is a primer for understanding the current state of the mental health system and the performance improvement skills and leadership acumen needed to address existing challenges. Sheppard Pratt, the award-winning, leading institution for mental healthcare in America, provided the focus on mental healthcare and became the laboratory for this body of work over the course of eight years. It hired a seasoned systems thinker with improvement expertise to work with mental health professionals and solve some of their most complex and chronic problems. The book is a result of the collaboration between a practicing psychiatrist in a leadership role and the systems engineer. Working together, they demonstrate how to think about redesigning care and redefining the nature of work to enhance value for both the people served and the healthcare workforce. They crafted a multi-pronged approach towards culture change at Sheppard Pratt, including implementing a course on "Learning to Improve," which introduced staff to a performance improvement methodology. There are several vignettes interwoven throughout the book that describe the complexities and constraints of the system. Solving some of these challenges creates a new paradigm of work while minimizing waste and enhancing value.

Kids in danger are treated instrumentally to promote the rehabilitation of their parents, the welfare of their communities, and the social justice of their race and tribe—all with the inevitable result that their most precious developmental years are lost in bureaucratic and judicial red tape. It is time to stop letting efforts to fix the child welfare system get derailed by activists who are concerned with race-matching, blood ties, and the abstract demands of social justice, and start asking the most important question: Where are the emotionally and financially stable, loving, and permanent homes where these kids can thrive? “Naomi Riley’s book reveals the extent to which abused and abandoned children are often injured by their government rescuers. It is a must-read for those seeking solutions to this national crisis.” —Robert L. Woodson, Sr., civil rights leader and president of the Woodson Center “Everyone interested in child welfare should grapple with Naomi Riley’s powerful evidence that the current system ill-serves the safety and well-being of vulnerable kids.” —Walter Olson, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies