Connecticut Awards $665,000 Grant to Parent Advocacy Group To Assist in KidCare Launch

Connecticut's Department of Children and Families recently granted $665,000 to A Family Advocacy Organization for Children's Mental Health, or FAVOR, an organization of parent advocacy groups, to help the department launch KidCare, a statewide mental health care initiative for children, the Hartford Courant reports (Poitras, Hartford Courant, 12/10). The program, which offers mentally ill youth community-based treatment instead of placing them in "costly" residential treatment programs, will begin this month in New Haven and then expand statewide in 2002. KidCare is designed as a "public-private partnership" between the state Department of Children and Families, which will be responsible for the program's administrative aspects, and "private mobile crisis units," which will coordinate care at the local level (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 10/9). The program was designed to coordinate expanded community mental health services under one regional service provider and eliminate "overlapping bureaucracies." In addition, KidCare aims to help children with mental health problems and their families before the problems "become so acute that a child needs to be placed in a treatment program." FAVOR, made up of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Connecticut, the African Caribbean American Parent Support Group, Padres Abriendo Puertas and Families United for Children's Mental Health, will use about $333,000 of the grant money to enlist 10 full-time "professional family advocates" to provide "direct and immediate support" statewide to families who have applied for services under the program. The group will put the remaining grant money toward education and outreach efforts, as well as toward management costs. FAVOR also will use the funds to recruit new members to help families in need and work as mental health advocates (Poitras, Hartford Courant, 12/10).