Nevada system of care for youth with serious emotional disturbance - the nevada division of child and family services (DCFS) has spent the last decade building a children's behavioral health system of…

Nevada system of care for youth with serious emotional disturbance - the nevada division of child and family services (DCFS) has spent the last decade building a children's behavioral health system of care in nevada. Despite many successes, nevada has faced challenges in providing accessible, effective, evidence-based treatment to children with complex, multi-agency needs. Nevada has identified children and youth ages 0-21 with a designation of serious emotional disturbance (SED) and intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (ID/DD) statewide as the population of focus for this project, including diverse and underserved populations. Nevada lacks the coordination, training, evidence-based practices, and provider network to meet the needs of the population of focus and will use this grant to address these deficiencies. This project has three goals: (1) assemble a statewide leadership committee to oversee the grant goals and outcomes and more broadly to address systemic barriers and build a sustainable infrastructure to provide services to the population of focus; (2) develop a program of services to provide accessible, equitable, and quality community-based evidence-based practices for children and youth in the population of focus; and (3) implement a statewide training plan to enhance the knowledge and skills of government and community organizations who work with children, youth, and families to utilize evidence-based, non-clinical interventions (e.g., supportive, consistent environments, teaching replacement behaviors, praise and positive statements) to support the population of focus to remain in their homes/communities reducing the need for residential intervention. DCFS will partner with community-based providers to execute goal 2, building sustainability in nevada's service array. DCFS estimates that 275 children/youth and their families will be served by the end of the four-year grant. Through these goals and objectives, DCFS will enhance statewide, cross-system collaboration and coordination with respect to nevada's children's behavioral health system of care, increase the availability of evidence-based practices provided by current community-based providers in nevada, and enhance the skills of child-serving entities statewide, all with the ultimate goal of providing effective services to children, youth, and families in nevada.