GOAL:  To determine Medicaid policy changes necessary to improve services for children and families, know their effectiveness, and ensure services connect appropriately to communities.

This group will identify regulations changes to improve accountability and service quality for children in the Arkansas mental health system. The first step is reviewing RSPMI / outpatient and inpatient policies against 1) federal and state requirements of Medicaid and 2) the following questions and criteria:

1) What is the impact of these changes on children, youth and families and their ability to benefit from services?

2) What is the impact of these changes on providers and their ability to provide effective services?

3) What is the tradeoff between additional requests of providers versus what children need? Where is the trade off? What is the compromise?

5) Do additional proposed services go “far enough” to meet the needs of children and their families? If not, what is missing?

6) Do recommended changes reflect System of Care principles? (e.g. child/family-driven and youth-guided, community-based, culturally competent?)