PDN article: February 23, 2013
The System of Care Expansion
Grant’s over-arching goal is to infuse our island community with awareness on
children mental health needs and their families through education and training,
on workforce capacity development, across agency collaboration, and
infrastructure development and sustainability.
Another goal is to
institutionalize the philosophy of system of care, core values and best
practices in the entire child serving agencies and in our community as the
standard of care for services to children, youth and families.
We have seen the good that
have come out over the years with the I Famagu’on-ta, child mental health initiative
and we want to spread this best practice throughout our island so that every
child, youth and family would benefit from this human service framework.
To achieve these goals we
have to sustain the practice beyond the federal dollars. During challenging financial times, this can
be very daunting. However, with
collective efforts of partner agencies, families and stakeholders in our
community, supported by new findings in research, and federal technical
assistance, we were able to complete the development of a 4-year Strategic
Expansion Plan for Guam. The plan has
five main strategies and several sub-strategies with action steps from year one
through year four.
We are pleased to report two
months after the development of the Guam plan, a major milestone in the plan
was achieved when Governor Eddie Calvo signed an executive order on November 8,
2012 establishing the Executive Committee on System of Care (ECSOC). We celebrated this accomplishment in Adelup
last Tuesday in the unveiling of the Expansion Plan and the coming together of
the members of the ECSOC to commit to implementing the plan in collaboration
with the Guam System of Care Council (GSOCC) and the Expansion Planning Team
(EPT).
The establishment of the
ECSOC is a sub-strategy of Strategy One:
Implementing regulatory changes and system-wide care standards and
protocols across child serving agencies and services providers for continuous
quality management.
The committee is comprised
of Directors from Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse (DMHSA),
Department of Public Health and Social Services (DPHSS), Department of
Education (DOE). Department of Youth Affairs (DYA), Department of Integrated
Services for Individuals with Disabilities (DISID), Guam Police Department
(GPD), the Judiciary, and the Department of Administration, (DOA).
As a senior level
management, the ECSOC will work together in the implementation of the Guam
4-year plan through a coordinated, comprehensive, interagency approach in the
development of a continuum of care that is child-centered, youth guided and
family-driven, which emphasizes prevention, early intervention, home and
community based services for children with mental health challenges and their
families. Special attention shall be
given to children who are at high risk.
The ultimate goal of the
Strategic Expansion Plan is to create a unified system of care island-wide,
across all of Guam’s child serving agencies which includes a broadly supported,
sustainable array of home and community based services provided by skilled
providers trained in system of care values, principles and best practices which
enables children and youth from birth to age 21 to achieve their maximum
potential and builds on the strengths of Guam’s diverse families.
In the coming weeks, we will
be presenting and elaborating on all the five strategies and sub-strategies of
this Expansion Plan. We invite input
from the public into the implementation of the plan. Please call us at 477-5338/9/5349/1050 for
more information, or if interested in helping out.
Written By: Annie F.B.
Unpingco , LCSW
