Legislative Priorities: Early Childhood and Mental Health Service Accessibility

Early Childhood Education Emerges as Important Issue

The E-12 Omnibus bill (HF630), as it currently stands, makes early childhood education a clear priority. Both the House and Senate files include funding for all day kindergarten beginning in 2015 and expand scholarships for children ages 3-5 to attend quality child care facilities. The House bill also increases funding to Head Start, though there is no such inclusion in the Senate file. If passed, these inclusions would affect the health, safety, and wellbeing of children in several ways.

• Children with special needs can be identified earlier and gain access to services and programs that will prevent them from slipping further behind their peers.
• Parents will be able to retain work without the stress of worrying about paying for child care or enrolling their child in a low-quality program.
• Children who are abused and neglected are more likely to be identified when they enter school. More children enrolled in early childhood programs would provide for the early identification of child safety concerns so services can be extended to the families earlier.

Aside from early childhood provisions, both the Senate and House file include language that would allow schools to utilize the safe schools levy to pay for the costs of co-location and collaboration with mental health providers. Doing this would allow more mental health practitioners to provide services within the schools and collaborate with school staff, ultimately increasing children’s accessibility to mental health services.

Health and Human Services Omnibus Bill Expands Mental Health Service Coverage

Accessibility of mental health services is also included as a priority within the Health and Human Services Omnibus Bill (HF1233). In the current version, both the Senate and House would expand Medical Assistance (MA) coverage for children’s mental health services. Under the bill, MA would cover family psychoeducation services and clinical care consultation when a child has been diagnosed with a mental illness. These provisions will allow mental health providers to bill MA as they attempt to increase a family’s knowledge of their child’s mental health needs and collaborate with other service providers such as teachers, medical doctors, or psychiatrists. The Senate file would also expand MA coverage for a mental health peer specialist while the House file would cover services received as a part of a school-linked mental health program. All expansions aim to increase the accessibility of mental health services for children with mental illness.

Another notable addition within the omnibus bill includes the definition of “family” for those children receiving intensive treatment foster care services. For these children, the definition of family has been extended to include all individuals that are important to the child’s treatment including foster parents, biological parents, and those included in the child’s permanency plan. These individuals would then be eligible to receive psychoeducation as a part of the child’s mental health treatment plan.