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Authors Posts by Jim Sharp

Jim Sharp

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The Pennsylvania Department of Education, Bureau of Special Education is pleased to announce the following training opportunity provided in collaboration with The McDowell Institute for Teacher Excellence in Positive Behavior Support, Bloomsburg University:

Youth Mental Health First Aid
Monday, May 15, 2017
8:00 am – 5:30 pm
Hershey Lodge and Convention Center
Presenters: McDowell Institute, Bloomsburg University
Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) is an 8-hour training designed to teach people methods of assisting a young person who may be in the early stages of developing a mental health problem or experiencing a mental crisis. This training is being offered, free of charge, to school and/or agency professionals to ensure ample support is available to youth across Pennsylvania’s schools. Suggested participants in YMHFA training are listed below.

Please note: this training is considered introductory and does not inform advanced skills/strategies.

Target Audience:
This training is open to classroom teachers, administrators, social services staff and volunteers, substance abuse professionals, social workers, school psychologists, guidance counselors, counselors, family members, college/university leaders, nurses, physician assistants, primary care workers, and policymakers.

Registration is available immediately, first-come, first-served. Space is limited. To register, interested participants should contact Charlotte Kemper.

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Please join the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (OMHSAS) on Tuesday, April 4, 2017 at 10:00 am for a webinar on the new Peer Support Services (PSS) bulletin and standards, including information on expanding the service to include youth and young adults. Peer certification will also be discussed.

The webinar will include:

  • An overview of the new standards
  • Information on expansion of services to youth and young adults, including employee clearances, training resources, and other issues
  • Peer Certification

You are welcome to attend in person in the Clothestree Conference Room (Room 12-48, Commonwealth Tower, Harrisburg). If you plan to attend in person, please RSVP to Cristal Leeper by 12:00 pm on Friday, March 31, and you will receive additional information concerning meeting logistics. Please note, you will be responsible for any parking charges.

If you would like to attend via webinar, please register here. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing connection information. Please note, the connection information you receive will be unique to you and should not be shared with others. Please send any questions to Cristal Leeper.

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RCPA members who provide children’s services rely on RCPA and its capacity to understand the business of providing an array of unique services intended to meet the needs of the children, youth, and families in PA. The scope of services provided by over 125 child-serving agencies presents opportunities to collaborate, prioritize, and address issues that have an impact on service delivery, planning, policy, licensing, and regulation.

The RCPA Children’s Division and its members remain committed to the work done through the Children’s Steering Committee. The Steering Committee is a group of 12–15 leaders from member agencies who dedicate time away from the work they do every day in order to participate in the development and oversight of the division’s priorities. Currently, we are seeking interested members to replace openings on the committee.

If you are interested, please submit a brief Letter of Interest that outlines your desire/interest to serve on the Steering Committee and a summary of your work experience that you believe qualifies you as a subject matter expert for working with children, youth, and families. We strive to have a diverse group to include leadership in finance, service provision, supervision (both administrative and clinical), and business planning. It is important to recognize each member’s uniqueness and how it can help to advance the goals and objectives of the committee.

Please submit your Letter of Interest via email to Robena Spangler and our Co-Chairs Tammy Marsico and Garrett Trout. We want to thank all of you for your interest and ongoing support of the Children’s Division.

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Governor Wolf has announced that several state agencies have been chosen to participate in the federal government’s Commercial Parity Policy Academy, designed to help states better protect consumers through enforcement of federal laws requiring parity between insurance coverage of mental health and substance use disorders and physical health coverage. “The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which has been adopted into Pennsylvania state law, and the Affordable Care Act, both require that mental health and substance use disorder treatments be provided by insurers at parity with physical health coverage, and this requirement is vital for many thousands of Pennsylvanians who need this coverage,” Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller said. The Parity Policy Academy, conducted by the federal Department of Health and Human Services, will provide state officials with assistance in better enforcing these laws to protect consumers. In addition to the Insurance Department, other state agencies taking part in the Parity Policy Academy include the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, the Department of Health, and the Department of Human Services.

Commissioner Miller said her department will be using a $529,000 federal grant under the Health Insurance Enforcement and Consumer Protections Grant Program to enhance parity implementation and enforcement. The Wolf Administration, with the support of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, will continue to coordinate efforts to implement and enforce the laws requiring parity for mental health and substance use disorders. “Substance use disorder services are now being provided for 175,000 Pennsylvanians at parity with physical health services because of the coverage they receive under the Affordable Care Act, and I urge the Trump Administration and Congress to consider these people and how important this coverage is to them, as they debate any changes to this law.”

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Again this year the Pennsylvania Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative (PAYSPI) and its partners will be hosting Suicide Prevention Nights at the Ballparks this year. These are the events where the students selected as the winners of the state’s youth suicide poster and public service announcement contest are publicly recognized for their work. The Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Harrisburg Senators have offered discount pricing, with a portion of the ticket sales through the PAYSPI links going toward suicide prevention in Pennsylvania. The Suicide Prevention Night In Philadelphia will be on April 22 (Phillies vs Atlanta Braves). For tickets at a special discount rate, with a contribution going to suicide prevention, visit this web page.

Look for information on similar events in both Pittsburgh and Harrisburg as information becomes available. In years past, provider organizations, managed care organizations, advocacy groups, and community businesses have made Suicide Prevention Nights at the Ballpark group outings for staff, consumers, and families.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued updated screening and assessment recommendations for children’s preventive health care. The AAP also continued to emphasize the need for “unfragmented continuity of care” in comprehensive health supervision. Published online in Pediatrics, the 2017 policy statement contains changes to 11 areas of care, relative to the 2016 revision of the Bright Futures Periodicity Schedule, which cover care from birth to age 21. The recommendations note that “developmental, psychosocial, and chronic disease issues for children and adolescents may require frequent counseling and treatment visits separate from preventive care visits,” they caution, adding that unusual family circumstances may necessitate additional visits.

Changes include such care areas as:

  • Depression: Screening for adolescents should begin at age 12 years. In addition, physicians should ask about maternal depression at infants’ 1-, 2-, 4-, and 6-month medical visits.
  • Psychosocial-behavioral: The update underscores that assessment should be family-centered and, in addition to a child’s social and emotional health, may include evaluation of caregivers and social determinants of health.

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The next OMHSAS Mental Health Planning Council (MHPC) is taking place on Thursday, March 2, 2017, from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm at the Child Welfare Resource Center (403 East Winding Hill Road, Mechanicsburg). The joint session will run from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm. The individual committees (Children’s, Adult, and Older Adult) will meet separately from 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm. A map and directions are available for your convenience.

The agenda and PowerPoint for the joint session are available as well, in addition to the agendas for the individual committee meetings, as well as the outcomes from the December 1, 2016 MHPC meetings, listed below:

Outcomes:

Agendas:

This meeting is open to the public. There is no need to RSVP; feel free to bring anyone you think would be interested in attending. Please contact Cristal Leeper with any questions.

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The number of adults in the United States aged 65 and older is expected to exceed 82 million by 2040. Approximately 16 million of these older adults will have a mental health or substance use condition and they will be turning to their primary care providers for care. Join this webinar to learn what integrated health care practitioners, especially primary care providers, need to know to be prepared to meet behavioral health needs of the older adults they serve. Learn how one primary care provider took steps to identify and address behavioral health concerns in older adults and hear how integrated primary and behavioral health care can guide patients toward healthy aging.

The SAMHSA-HRSA will host a webinar on Wednesday, February 15, at 1:00 pm on this topic of growing importance. Primary care providers and behavioral health professionals can register for free here.

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A new report finds that there have been substantial gains on the issue of making addiction and mental health coverage equal to physical health coverage. Much work still needs to be done, especially for children, according to Ron Manderscheid, PhD, Executive Director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors (NACBHDD) and the National Association for Rural Mental Health. “Children can’t speak for themselves on the issue of parity,” Manderscheid says. “That’s why it’s very important for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state health insurance commissioners to protect the rights of children around parity. Any child who has health insurance coverage through the individual marketplace under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or through the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, is entitled to parity protection, but we don’t really know how well it’s working.” The estimated 8.4 million children enrolled under the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is part of Medicaid, are not covered by parity protections, Manderscheid noted. “The field has so focused on problems with implementing parity with adults that children haven’t gotten equal attention in this process.” In October, the White House Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task Force issued a report that concluded that overall, state-level substance use disorder parity laws have helped to increase the treatment rate by approximately 9 percent across substance use disorder specialty facilities and by about 15 percent in facilities that accept private insurance. This effect was found to be more pronounced in states with more comprehensive parity laws.

“The concept of parity is simple, but the implementation of it is incredibly complex,” said Manderscheid. The trickiest part of parity is a concept called non-quantitative treatment limitations, which are processes that managed care firms use to determine who will and won’t get care, he explains. Currently, the burden chiefly falls on the consumer to report to the federal or state government if their claims for addiction or mental health treatment are denied. “The enforcement burden should fall on HHS, state insurance commissioners, and the insurance companies themselves.”

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