Transforming Children's Mental Health Policy into Practice by Cohen Robert;Ventura Allison B.;Hazel William A. Jr.;Ventura Allison B.; & Allison B. Ventura

Author:Cohen, Robert;Ventura, Allison B.;Hazel, William A., Jr.;Ventura, Allison B.; & Allison B. Ventura
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

Part IV

THE REVIEWS ARRIVE: MAKING SENSE OF CSA’s 20-YEAR ODYSSEY

Chapter 12

Percentages, Perceptions, and Profiles

Among the most striking features of CSA are the following: (a) that the Comprehensive Services Act for At-Risk Youth and Families, with its bold and ambitious vision, was actually adopted by a state not always known as a leading force for human service reform and (b) more than 20 years after its inception, this grand exercise in collaboration has survived multiple threats to its existence and is still pursuing its original purpose of serving at-risk youth and their families in a comprehensive and responsive manner. Gail Ledford, who participated in the original planning for the Act, views CSA as “a catalyst that continues to push forward change . . . there has not been one year that the General Assembly has not dealt with CSA; it is being tweaked every year” (G. Ledford, personal communication, August 3, 2010). Chuck Kehoe, a member of the team of state agency directors that established the initial operating procedures for CSA, puts it more succinctly, “Its success can be identified by the fact that it has been in place for 20 years” (C. Kehoe, personal communication, February 10, 2012).

While CSA’s perseverance and longevity are noteworthy, its extended duration is not sufficient proof that it has been successful. Views vary on how effectively the Act has achieved its initial goals and there is limited data available to allow definitive conclusions about how well the system has performed. Nonetheless, the perspectives of stakeholders and the data that have been collected during the extended span of the system’s operation provide a basis for helping us understand CSA’s accomplishments and deficiencies as well as the factors that contributed to these outcomes.

A BROAD BRUSH STROKE ASSESSMENT

As with most other aspects of CSA, it is not possible to condense our evaluation of the Act’s performance into a clear-cut conclusion of success or failure. Throughout this book we have attempted to document how the system has not evolved linearly. Some aspects have grown rapidly, while others have improved slowly or failed to thrive. Overall, CSA has experienced phases of positive development as well as periods in which it has been stagnant or has regressed. These stages have not always proceeded as one might have expected.

Even the definition of which goals we use to assess the effectiveness of CSA is subject to debate. Do we measure success by the extent to which the system achieved the goals of the initial legislation? Or, do we benchmark its performance against more recent perceptions of the purpose of the Act, using objectives that have been articulated by policymakers as the system has evolved? There is consensus that initially CSA had two principal goals: (a) improve the manner in which at-risk youth were served through a collaborative, interagency process that individualized each service plan, empowered families to participate and provided services, whenever possible, within the child’s home community, and (b) gain better control of spending, diverting funds away from out-of-community residential settings and re-investing the money saved into locally based service programs.

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