Information Center Bulletin
Volume 1, No. 1 Winter 1996-97

New Children's Forum Bridges Distance and Diversity

As places to live and raise a family, densely packed South Bronx, rural Kansas, and the Navajo Nation of Tohatchi, New Mexico have very little in common--except innovative, family-focused, culturally competent, community-based systems of care for children with serious emotional disturbances and their families.

Creating fast, efficient mechanisms to share and exchange information among the 22 diverse grantees is one of the challenges the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) Child, Adolescent and Family Branch (CAFB) faces as it fosters this elaborate network of care.

CAFB Current Grantees

"Building open-door, community-based systems for children's mental health services is a complicated, sophisticated venture," says Branch Chief Gary DeCarolis, M.Ed. "Along with parents, grantees work with a range of public and private child services agencies--such as mental health, child welfare, education, juvenile justice, and other State and local agencies. It gets even more complicated as you add state-of-the- art services and incorporate changes in the way programs are funded.

"So the need to ensure rapid information exchange increases exponentially," DeCarolis adds. "We're meeting that need, in part, through the new children's forum for grantees on the Information Center's electronic bulletin board system."

Plans for the forum may include a hardware and software survey, site-developed documents and reports on best practices, and conference papers. In addition, each grantee may take responsibility for a "topic-of-the-month" to boost online discussion on specific clinical, programmatic, and administrative issues. The forum also will serve as a focal point for administrative information from CMHS.

The Information Center provides technical assistance and continuing support to ensure all grantees have the computer capability and training to use the forum easily and efficiently.

For more information, contact Gary DeCarolis at 301-443-1333.

Information Center Bulletin
Volume 1, No. 1