Training/Technical Assistance & Best Practices

MEMORANDUM

January 14, 2008

To: CPMT Chairs, CSA Coordinators

From: Kim Mcgaughey

Subject: Report on Residential Services for Children in the Comprehensive Services Act for Program Year 2007

I am very excited to share with you our report on “Residential Services for Children in the Comprehensive Services Act: Utilization, Length of Stay and Expenditures Statewide and by Locality for Program Year 2007.” This report is mandated annually by the Appropriations Act.

Thanks to the hard work of localities collecting and reporting this data (along with all the work in serving these children and their families), I believe this will be valuable and timely information for your community. It is important for us to give this information back to you to use. It will help your CPMT and community analyze your use of CSA funds for residential care in FY2007 and over the past three years. The written report provides statewide data. Locality data is attached in several schedules as described below:

• Number of children, average length of stay (number of days during the year), and expenditures on residential care during the program year by locality for 2005, 2006 and 2007 (Schedule 1).
• Number of children and average length of stay (number of days during the year) for children in residential care placed through foster care, special education and non-mandated categories by locality (Schedule 2).
• Average length of stay over four years (number of days during four years) for children who were in residential care during PY04 by locality (Schedule 3).
• Number of children and expenditures for residential treatment facilities by locality for program years 2005, 2006 and 2007 (Schedule 4).
• Number of children and expenditures for group homes by locality for program years 2005, 2006 and 2007 (Schedule 5)
• Number of children and expenditures for psychiatric hospitals by locality for program years 2005, 2006 and 2007 (Schedule 6)
• Utilization rates by locality for program year 2005 (Schedule 7)
• Utilization rates by locality for program year 2006 (Schedule 8)
• Utilization rates by locality for program year 2007 (Schedule 9)
Utilization defined as:
o Percentage of CSA children in residential care;
o Percentage of the total youth population in the community that was in residential care;
o Percentage of all CSA services that were residential services; and
o Percentage of all CSA expenditures spent on residential care.

By using two other reports available on-line, you can then understand this report within the overall context of how your community uses CSA services and funds. Collectively, these can help you identify trends, service gaps, and opportunities for developing services in your community. These reports are:

1. Your gross expenditures by service type for number of children, length of stay, and expenditure data (compare your locality to the statewide data) http://www.csa.state.va.us/html/statewide_statistics/statewide_stats_FY07_DataSet_Gross_SPT.cfm

2. Your CPMT management report which provides demographics, services, trends, etc.
http://www.csa.state.va.us/html/statewide_statistics/statewide_stats_cpmt.cfm

At this point these reports only include CSA funded services, but I am very excited that these are definitely great steps in the right direction. They do not yet include Medicaid and Title IV-E expenditures. The 2007 CPMT management report has been designed to also report Medicaid data by locality. We are getting this data from DMAS and will distribute the new CPMT management report with CSA and Medicaid residential care data as soon as it has been populated. As you know, child specific Title IV-E payment data is only available at the local level. VDSS is adapting its new data system to gather this information in the future and then we will include it in our reports to you. This will then give the total costs. However, these three reports provide a great start though for understanding the role CSA plays in your community. You need to provide the larger context of these other funding sources, and other factors in your community, in reviewing these reports.

Please let Chuck or your Technical Assistance Coordinator know if you have any questions…. Again thank you for gathering this data. You can see how critically important and beneficial your CSA data set information is now!! I also want to thank Chuck and his team for their excellent work in getting these reports for you – Pat, Madhavi, and Sharyn…