Louisiana is making significant changes to the way services will be delivered to children in or at-risk of out-of home placement. This has been a long time coming and, if done well and with a tenacious persistence by the Coordinated System of Care to maintain fidelity to the values that undergird the system, it will be a good thing for Louisiana’s children and families. One must be careful not to expect the system of care will be released in a state of perfection. After studying other systems of care, I believe it will take a decade for Louisiana’s CSoC to really hit its stride. I believe, too, it will be worth the wait.
If the Coordinated System of Care is successful, it will mean fewer children in Louisiana require residential care. It will help keep children at home and keep families together. It will be a good thing. Consequently, it will reduce the need Louisiana has for residential care. I talk about this in this month’s President’s Message, Growth of Home and Community-based Services:
Our growth in the future will happen as we expand our current home and community-based services across the state and as we develop new services designed to intervene early and prevent the larger problems that lead to residential care. One of our long-held value statements begins, “Children belong with their families.”
The expansion of prevention and early intervention efforts will occur directly in the homes and communities of families – where hurting people live – by staff who have been trained to intervene early and resolve family crises, arrange community-based supports, and create personalized, family-focused plans of care to alleviate the distress families experience.
Read more at: Growth of Home and Community-based Services.
