Testimony to the Texas House Select Committee on Youth Health and Safety
Texas leaders have shown an increasing interest in helping more children stay safely with their families and out of foster care. When state leaders succeed in this effort, parents and children avoid traumatic and painful separation, and the state avoids adding more children to a foster care system that is difficult and expensive to manage and, in some cases, harmful to children. While most children enter foster care because of concerns about abuse or neglect, there is a separate population of Texas children who end up in foster care because they have complex mental health challenges that their parents are unable to manage. Texas has programs that provide effective mental health services to children in these circumstances, but the services are limited.
Our testimony includes five recommendations for ways that state leaders can improve access to those mental health services so that more children can get healthy and stay with their families rather than entering the foster care system:
- Increase reimbursement rates for the YES Waiver program so more children with complex mental health services can receive services
- Allow reimbursement through Medicaid for Family Partner Support Services and Youth Peer Support
- Sustain the Texas Family First Pilots
- Expand the availability of evidence-based family preservation services
- Broaden criteria for federal matching funds for evidence-based services
