The Mississippi Department of Mental Health put out its Mississippi Youth Programs Around the Clock (MYPAC) proposed permanent policy for public comment on December 17, and the public comment period ends at 5 PM on January 10. You can read the policy here, and review how to submit comments here. Anyone can comment on the policy.
If your child is or has been in MYPAC, we encourage you to consider commenting on both the policy itself and how the MYPAC program can be most helpful to children and families. Your comments do not need to be on a form or in a specific format. You can just write them down or type them on a piece of paper or in an email.
Submitting public comments is a helpful way for families and others interested in the care of children to help make sure that policies focus on what is most important. If you are a parent, remember, you know something very important that no one else knows: You know your child and the things that are most helpful to them.
MYPAC provides in-home services to children who would otherwise need the level of care of a 24/7 psychiatric residential treatment facility, such as Cares, Millcreek or Youth Villages (in Tennessee). If your child has ever received MYPAC services, we encourage you to share public comments about what was most and least helpful about your child’s and family’s experience.
If your child has ever met the level of care of needing a psychiatric residential treatment center, think about what your family would need to have that same level of care for your child in your home and community. What kinds of help and services would you want for your child? Who would provide them? Where would you like them delivered? That type of feedback in public comments can help the Department of Mental Health know if this policy focuses on the most important things.
One concern that we have about this policy and how it is currently written is that it could put families in the position of having limited choices about services. This policy appears to be based on “bundled rate” billing (as opposed to a “per service” rate) for any day that even one service is delivered. That could tempt providers to provide just one service per day and make sure that they provide services three times per week, the maximum number of days per week the policy allows. This policy also means that providers would have little incentive to tell families about services from other providers that might be more helpful.
Having a choice about services and providers is a fundamental principle of family-driven practice. Providers should tell families about all of the services that could be helpful to their child without any pressure to choose services from any particular provider. Mississippi has chosen wraparound-care coordination as the way to help families whose children have the most significant needs learn about services in the community. State law (lines 69 and 70) requires that service planning use a strengths-based, wraparound process.
There have been many challenges to families receiving wraparound in a way that helps them learn about all of the services available to their child and freely choose among them, in part because wraparound has not been separated from MYPAC. This policy separates MYPAC from wraparound, but it doesn’t emphasize wraparound being the care coordination model in state law and how it should be delivered. Instead, this policy seems to make it more likely that providers could enroll families in their own agencies’ MYPAC programs without telling families about wraparound or other services from other agencies. We are concerned about this.
Families as Allies will share our public comments about this policy with you, likely in next week’s newsletter. We have been following developments with MYPAC and wraparound since May of 2021. These are previous related blogs:
MISSISSIPPI YOUTH PROGRAMS AROUND THE CLOCK (MYPAC) UPDATE
MORE UPDATES TO MISSISSIPPI YOUTH PROGRAMS AROUND THE CLOCK (MYPAC) PROPOSED
COMMENTS ON MISSISSIPPI YOUTH PROGRAMS AROUND THE CLOCK (MYPAC) POLICY DUE THIS FRIDAY
[Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash]
