Project Summary:
Wisconsin currently lacks the infrastructure to serve youth with the most chronic, complex behavioral and mental health needs. These youth are involved in multiple care systems (e.g., child welfare, mental health, disability, juvenile justice) as no single system can typically meet the many needs, often leading to deferred responsibility, deepening crises, and poor outcomes. Youth and families experience fragmented care and repeated crises.
The Milwaukee Health Care Partnership’s Youth Behavioral Health Committee has co-developed a Tiered Model of Care for Youth with Complex Behavioral and Mental Health Needs. This model offers a new way to organize and deliver care using defined tiers of complexity, coordinated planning, and joint accountability to sustained, cross-agency support (e.g., team-based coordination, caregiver support, extended stabilization), which is not typically funded or billable. This project will formalize the structures and processes needed to test this model of accountable cross-sector care and develop a report of findings, including a sustainability plan.
Funding will support the formalization of a cross-sector structure to strengthen and systematize partner collaboration; the testing and evaluation of processes for the Tier 2 and Tier 3 Response Action Teams; the testing and evaluation of resources to support these processes; and the development and dissemination of the final report and findings for a sustainable future. The pilot will strengthen local capacity to collaboratively serve youth with complex needs in the least restrictive settings and develop a scalable model that can be shared statewide. By uniting health systems, behavioral health providers, and families within a formalized structure, with established processes and pooled resources, this project will reduce fragmentation, prevent unnecessary institutional placements, reduce out-of-state care, and improve care statewide for youth with complex needs.
Community Partners: Milwaukee Healthcare Partnership, Milwaukee County–BHS, Children’s Wisconsin–Mental and Behavioral Health, Medical College of WI, Children’s WI–Psychiatry, Care4Kids, WI Department of Children and Families, Milwaukee County