June 1, 2007

Shared Outcomes for Mental Health and Child Welfare Partnership. Draft.

The Kansas Mental Health Child Welfare Steering Committee has developed a Statewide Partnership Plan for how the child welfare and mental health systems will coordinate services to create a seamless array of services for children and their families served by both systems. In addition to the numerous practical details of daily practices, the Partnership Plan articulates the goal of establishing a common set of outcomes for children who concurrently receive services from the child welfare and mental health systems. It is anticipated that increased coordination between child welfare and children's mental health will result in better outcomes for children and their families. Likewise, establishing shared outcomes is seen as a way of recognizing common goals and encouraging better coordination of services for children and their families toward achieving those goals. The first section of this report is a policy level analysis describing the approach for outcome measurement in both systems, analyzing similarities and differences, and discussing options for establishing shared outcomes. The second section of this report will provide results from an initial analysis of some of the shared outcome measures that were identified for which data were available. The last section will outline proposed next steps for establishing a process for monitoring shared outcomes and other key aspects of the Mental Health and Child Welfare partnership identified in the statewide Partnership Plan.