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QUESTIONS ASKED - Answered by Presenters Q - What additional expertise do residential programs need to truly engage families? Little seems to have evolved in family work for kids in residential care--parents are still not very engaged, it seems. What are best practices? A- Strategies to engage families include: High Fidelity Wraparound/Child Family Teams are lead in facilitating access to residential interventions. Flexible family time for parents to meet the needs of family. Parent peer support partners as members of the residential admission teams, support for families throughout the residential intervention. Warm lines and connection to parent peer support for parents to assist with navigating systems. Q - How did NJ get the integration to happen between the CMOs and Residential Providers (shared Service Plans)? Or the shift to using the CFT/POC for all decisions about "moves"? Did it start as a regulation shift or culture shift? A - The NJ transformation started with shifts in culture and policy. The Care Management Organizations (CMOs) were tasked with shifting culture in their communities and policy shifted responsibility to the CMO’s by requiring child family teams to facilitate and coordinate access to all behavioral health service array including residential interventions. Q - How often do you have to discharge the children that either now or before would need restraint? A - We do not ever discharge a youth because they would have (now or before) been restrained. The emphasis has been on staff training and relationships - and restraints have and continue to decrease. We view restraints as a treatment failure not youth or staff problem. All our contracts with NJ are no eject/ no reject and we figure out how to work with every youth and family that is referred to us. Q - Will you share [y]our rate structure? Will you share [y]our rate setting methodology? [likely referring to NJ] A - We will not be sharing the NJ rate setting methodology. For more specific information reach out to elizabeth.manley@ssw.umaryland.edu

There has never been such a comprehensive program of care provided to assist gay kids as they mature and develop along common life trajectories insuring that they have full access to others like themselves with informed and mobilized parents encouraged to proactively advocate for their kids by pushing school inclusion policies with an endless stream of work books manuals trainings, fact sheets, social and support meetings t-shirt's opportunities to connect kiods with adult mentors I could go on. We still have no-homo laws in some states and yet we had several years and to some extent the policies are still being followed many placeless where effectively trans inclusion and ideological narratives where enforced by the department of justice for goodness sake. If there where half as much serious consideration and endorsement of practices to include support and aggressively safeguard gay and lesbian kids you would probably see the number of kids identifying as trans go down by more than 1/2