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Bureau Administered Programs and Partnerships

Bureau Administered Programs and Partnerships

The Parent Support Partner (PSP) Medicaid service is an intervention-based approach to support families whose children receive services through a community mental health service provider.

The purpose of the Parent Support Partner Project or service is to increase family involvement and engagement within the mental health treatment process and to equip parents with the skills necessary to address the challenges of raising a youth with special needs thus improving outcomes for youth with SED, serious emotional disturbance or intellectual/developmental or I/DD, involved with the public mental health system.

The PSP service is provided by trained parent with first-hand experience navigating public child serving agencies and raising a child with mental health or developmental challenges. Support provided to a family by a PSP will focus on increasing confidence and competence in parenting skills, increasing the parent’s knowledge to navigate systems and partner with service providers, and empower the parent to develop sustainable, natural support networks after formal service delivery has ended. Parent Support Partner’s, serving as an equal member of the treatment team, will assist in identifying goals within the Person Centered/Family Centered Plan that will support the parent to develop the new skills, resources, and confidence in parenting a child with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and/or intellectual developmental disabilities (I/DD).

For additional information, visit the Association for Children’s Mental Health contact Margo Pierce, Parent Support Partner Coordinator at mpierce@acmh-mi.org.

  • Youth Peer Support

Michigan’s Youth Peer Support Project is a Statewide Initiative in partnership with MDHHS that provides Medicaid reimbursable Youth Peer Support to eligible youth as a part of Michigan’s Early Periodic Screening Diagnosis and Treatment State Plan. Association of Children’s Mental Health (ACMH) provides the Statewide Coordinator & Assistant Coordinator for the project and provides initial training and ongoing coaching, supervision, support and technical assistance.

The Youth Peer Support Medicaid Service is designed to support youth with a serious emotional disturbance through shared activities and interventions.

The goals of Youth Peer Support include:

  • Supporting youth empowerment.
  • Assisting youth in developing skills to improve their overall functioning and quality of life.
  • Working collaboratively with others involved in delivering the youth’s care.

Youth Peer Support services can be in the form of direct support, information sharing and skill building.

Youth Peer Support Specialists must have lived experience navigating behavioral health systems and must participate in and complete the approved MDHHS training curriculum.

Qualifications for the Youth Peer Support Specialist include:

  • Young adult, ages 18 through age 26, with lived experience who received mental health services as a youth.
  • Willing and able to self- identify as a person who has or is receiving public behavioral health services and is prepared to use that experience in helping others.
  • Experience receiving services as a youth in complex, child serving systems preferred (behavioral health, child welfare, juvenile justice, special education, etc.)
  • Employed by PIHP/CMHSP or its contract providers.
  • Trained in the MDHHS approved curriculum and ongoing training model.

For more information about the Youth Peer Project or for information about how to bring Youth Peer Support to your community contact:  Kristina Dristy, Program Support, Youth Peer Support and Parent Support Partner, kdristy@acmh-mi.org or 517-643-3314.

  • Michigan Child Care Collaborative

Michigan Child Collaborative Care (MC3) is a care model to increase access to mental health treatment for underserved children and adolescents and high-risk perinatal women in 83 counties in Michigan. The program includes:

  • “Just-in-time” phone consultation to primary care providers and tele-psychiatry consultation to children and adolescents and high-risk perinatal women.
  • Behavioral Health Consultants (BHCs) to assist with recruitment of primary care providers for enrollment in MC3, linking with the primary care providers to facilitate phone consultation with Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist as well as arrange for tele-psychiatry (assessment).
  • BHCs are embedded in selected large primary care practices to assist with the implementation of standardized mental health screening and assessments; provide psycho-education to parents and youth; provide brief mental health interventions; and link the child/family to local resources as well as follow up referrals to behavioral health services.
  • Panel reviews for the larger primary care practices so that providers can get consultation from psychiatrists on multiple patients in a scheduled hour.
  • Webinars and live educational sessions for primary care practices based on their identification of topics of interest.

MC3-Connect is a five-year project funded by the Health Research and Services Administration. A collaborative relationship between MDHHS, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University is used to carry out the four goals of MC3-Connect:

  • EXPAND MC3 phone-based, tele-psychiatric, group case consultations and behavioral health consultant support (BHC) to all 83 Michigan counties and to 70 school-based health centers (CAHCs), including the Upper Peninsula, Thumb Region, and tribal populations
  • EDUCATE providers and pediatric residents by developing a series of culturally sensitive and content relevant webinars based on requested topics.
  • LINK MC3 to other evidence-based (EB) intervention programs supported by MDHHS, University of Michigan (UM) and Michigan State University (MSU) to facilitate access and coordinate follow up care to for women/children in underserved and rural areas without specialty services.
  • Integrate SCREENING AND REFERRAL with workflow processes primary care and school-based health centers and provide MC3 as a resource.
  • One collaborative effort to educate providers was the creation of a short video on how providers can engage with parents and youth when discussing behavioral health. This content for this video was created by a pediatrician and the executive director of the Association for Children’s Mental Health. Members of both the Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) and Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) from the Association of Children’s Mental Health provided feedback on the video to ensure parent and youth voice were adequately captured. You can view the video here.