The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Division of Family and Children's Services, the Eastern Washington University School of Social Work and Idaho Health and Welfare Region I are sponsoring a joint application for a Local CASSP Systems Development Grant of $600,000 over a three year period of time. The Division of Family and Children's Services would provide a $300,000 match over the same three year period. The Idaho grant application represents an effort to address, via a local demonstration project, those barriers to effective treatment services delivery unique to states with a largely rural population base and relative scarcity of service dollars and professionally trained service providers. If awarded, NIMH dollars would allow the development and evaluation of a Region-wide pilot system of highly individualized and rurally-compatible alternatives to residential treatment by implementing Classroom Companion and Crisis and Respite Companion Services, Treatment Family Placement Capacity, Family-Centered Hospitalization Capacity, and Wraparound Services Funding Capacity throughout the Region in order to enhance and expand upon existing Family-Centered assessment, Family Case Management, Intensive Family Therapy and Family Support Services. As fewer and fewer Region I children require out-of-school and out-of-community placement, state dollars will gradually be diverted to Region I from existing residential treatment contracts for the ongoing funding of services. Target Population: All severely emotionally and severely behavioral disturbed children from Region I currently in out-of-school and out-of- community placement or at imminent risk for such placement. these children and their families would be identified via the routine provision of Departmental services to child protection, child mental health and juvenile justice service populations and via collaborative classroom projects with selected Region school districts. National Significance: The implementation of a comprehensive rural system of care in Region I, and the hypothesis-based investigation of the effectiveness of such a system, would allow Idaho to demonstrate to rurally-based children's services agencies nation-wide the effectiveness of individualized, para-professionally staffed components of care to expand the range of services available to severely disturbed children and their families.
