So if a school principal makes a referral because this child needs mental health services, that child is then assessed individually regardless of whether mom and dad receive those Medicaid services or not?
Right. So the child can be assessed regardless, right. And if they're not on medical assistance, another referral could be made outside of our program. If they are and the parents aren't, they can still proceed with making that referral to a Medicaid provider. We don't want that to be the, oh, because you don't have this, you don't get that. Those people are directed through the right door.
And I would also add that in Medicaid our members don't pay for any services at all. There's no copays or anything like that. There's never a cost to kids or families.
I just got one specific question for the neighborhoods with McPherson. McPherson is closed. How do we plan to fill the gaps? They're leaving. They had afterschool programs, community meetings, fall events scheduled. What are we going to do with that?
McPherson is closed, yes. And there were programs there for the kids in my neighborhood that were used --
No, these are just regular programming, afterschool programs and all that stuff. Do we know if there's any plan for any of that there or the placement services that they used to provide or anything?
I don't know offhand, but we certainly can take that as a follow-up.
Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us today. Again, I said this earlier. This is a continuing conversation. I think that again I'm looking to DBHIDS, CBH to be able to lead the action work, right, the work that we can all come back here to in months, in 12 months and say, this is the direct impact that we have had in the neighborhood, this is the number of children that we're providing services to, these are the number of schools that we're providing direct services in, right. To me, all of the schools within that Kensington footprint should have more resources, not less. I think that we need to figure out ways to reduce the barriers that sometimes we as government put in place unnecessarily, right. We know where the greatest need is. We need to figure out how we work collaboratively with the school district and others to be able to provide and connect young people with the services that they need. Because we as government have allowed for that trauma to take place in that community every day. And so, I look forward to continuing the work. I look forward to continuing the conversation and I look forward to making the difficult decisions with you.
Thank you. I'll be the same. Thank you for what you do on a daily basis. And to be honest, we want to support you. We just want to see some results for our kids, for that neighborhood.
Understood. And we're happy to talk with you all any time. Thank you.
Thank you for being with us today. Will the Clerk please call the next panel?
There being no more panels to testify, we'll now transition into public comment -- and that's it. There's no one else for public comment. Is there anyone else that is in the chambers that would like to testify? If you are interested in testifying, please come up here for the record and begin with your public comment. (Witnesses approached witness table.)
Good evening. My name is Mary Dougherty and I have worked in children's services for 50 years. And luckily, I've been able to do it at one agency in a variety of positions. And I work at CORA. You saw me here with my CEO earlier and we have met in the past about our services. I just would like to say that I think it's wonderful to ask for mandates, for example, for DBH to make sure I'm doing my job and CORA is doing our job, and need the mandate for CBH for DHS to make sure that's happening. I think we talked about this before. I would love to see a mandate beyond CBH and DBH. I'd love to see a mandate from City Council to make all of the city agencies that you are giving money to work together, because the silos that you're talking about live in those individual agencies. You have both made a beautiful point, that the collaboration piece has to happen. And if it works in Kensington, everything else will fall in line. But it seems like there's many, many, many of the problems that we experience in our service providers actually happening in Kensington. It's a great laboratory to make this work, but I do believe that the city government needs to mandate the city departments to make sure that they are working together to get those barriers down. You heard example after example of agencies that have maybe limited resources and agencies with wider ranges of services who are braiding services together to make sure that that child has as much as we have available to give. But I do believe that we have to live by the golden rule here. He who makes the gold --has the gold makes the rules. City Council really does have the gold here, and I would love to see some kind of task group or Council with teeth that would hold sway over the government departments of the City of Philadelphia to make sure that as much as you say, I believe that you want to support the work of the people that sat here, but there's some folks that aren't here and they might need to hear some of this and be told, you need housing and you need DHS to work with DBHIDS, to work with CBH and their subsequent providers, because you may find out that many of us providers live in multiple worlds there and we run across these stumbling blocks that you are talking about. So that's all I wanted to say, is that if there's a way to maybe elevate the mandate, I think it might be a way to help identify the silos and what created them in the first place, because once we know that we can blow them out of the water. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Before we conclude this public hearing on Resolution No. 11 250502, Councilmember Harrity, are there any closing remarks you'd like to make before we conclude? No. This concludes the business before the Special Committee on Kensington today. Thank you so much for everyone who attended and who provided testimony. I look forward to continuing the conversation and continuing the work that we have before us. Have a great evening. (Special Committee on Kensington concluded at 5:55 p.m.) C E R T I F I C A T I O N I, hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence noted are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me in the foregoing matter, and that this is a correct transcript of the same. __________________________________ TANEHA CARROLL