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CCSI began in the 1990s as a multi-agency approach to help counties create local structures to provide cross-systems services to children with serious emotional and behavioral disabilities who are at risk of residential placement. In 2002, CCSI was established within the Council on Children and Families by law (Social Services Law, Section 483-c) and expanded to address the cross-system treatment needs of children with multiple diagnoses. CCSI serves as a mechanism to make certain that multiply-diagnosed children receive the necessary services and supports that will allow them to remain in their homes, schools and communities. CCSI ensures the coordinated delivery of services through a three tier interagency structure that addresses service barriers at the provider-, county-, and state-levels.
The CCSI is unique in its ability to work across and within a broad range of child and family service systems. There is no locally prescribed programmatic component to the Initiative beyond the formation of local teams that develop individualized service plans and collaborate on system-wide coordination and improvement. Localities are encouraged to develop approaches that will best serve their target populations and that compliment existing or anticipated efforts to improve services to children and their families.
In 2002, the Governor signed the CCSI Statute into law, codifying a core set of principles and structures that will help each locality shape and advance their individual and collective efforts. This document is designed to help localities implement integrated child-serving systems in a manner consistent across counties and in line with established practices and principles at the state and national levels.
Please note that the materials and resources provided and referenced in this document are intended to provide background information and to give you a starting point in your work to develop locally driven systems of care for children and their families. Unless explicitly indicated, the policies, forms, instruments, and strategies presented are not officially endorsed by the Tier III Committee members or their respective agencies and organizations. Decisions on using any of these materials should be made by your local stakeholders through a collaborative, multi-systemic process.
CCSI leads to coordinated systems of care that:
In 2002, the Governor signed the CCSI Statute into law, codifying a core set of principles and structures that will help each locality shape and advance their individual and collective efforts. The following pdf provides statute highlights of the CCSI legislation.
The Tier III Team is the Statewide Level of CCSI, and is made up of agency and family representatives that work to identify systems level solutions to meet locally identified needs. Agency partners include: The Office of Mental Health; State Education Department; Office of Children and Family Services; Council on Children and Families; Office of Probation and Correctional Alternatives; Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services; Office for People with Developmental Disabilities; Department of Health and The Commission on Quality of Care and Persons with Disabilities. There are six family representatives on the Tier III Team.
The Tier III Team serves to coordinate planning across child and family serving services systems; address barriers to the effective delivery of local interagency services; coordinate the provision of technical assistance and training; track the outcomes being achieved; and to reports results and recommendations for change to the governor, legislature and state board of regents.
All participants in CCSI are expected to operate consistent with a system of care philosophy that focuses on child and family strengths, cultural competence, and one-child-at-a-time care and planning. The goals of the Coordinated Children's Services Initiative are to assure that children with emotional and/or behavioral challenges, whenever appropriate for the child and family:
The Tier II Team is the county level interagency leadership team made up of local government, service systems, and family representatives. The Team consists of (but is not limited to) local commissioners or leadership of local health, mental hygiene, juvenile justice, probation and other human services systems. The education system is represented or selected by the BOCES district superintendent. Teams are able and encouraged to expand their membership to include leaders in other local systems such as the courts, agency regional representatives, County Youth Bureaus, or other members as deemed appropriate.
The Tier II Team serves as the local oversight body for all CCSI activities. Tier II Teams work to implement the goals and principles of CCSI, facilitate the coordination of and linkages between service systems, address barriers to coordinated services delivery, and assure that funding is available in accordance with the provisions of the CCSI statute
Tier II Teams strive to develop systems for serving children and families that are:
In addition to state data collection requirements, the Change of Placement Subcommittee offers many other benefits to the agencies as participants, and through its process to the children being presented as well. First and foremost, the group offers participants a venue where they can bring their difficult cases and receive observations, suggestions, and recommendations from other disciplines. Being a small county, all of the children presented are known to more than one, if not all, of the agencies present. The referring agency is able to learn of what other agencies were observing with this child and family, have advance notice of recommendations from other agencies of an impending placement, have more time to prepare responses to such a placement, and more easily make referrals for needed services. Last but not least, each agency would feel supported by the other agencies. They would not feel as if they were alone in dealing with a difficult, stressful, and trying high needs case.”
Monroe County Youth and Family Partnership—Description of an innovative model to serve children and youth in Monroe County. Partnership between public and private sector agencies including the mental health social services and probation departments.
Local Collaborative Assessment of Capacity Instrument— Assessment tool to help localities identify the strengths and weaknesses of their local collaborative efforts.
Joint Planning Agreements —To address the need to serve children referred for residential care more effectively and efficiently, Region 2 social services districts, residential child care agencies, NYS OCFS, OMH, and OMR joined together in partnership to create new strategies for better meeting the needs of children referred for residential care. This document outlines their operating principles and procedures.
Family-based Tier I teams are interagency teams assembled to work with a child and family to develop an individualized, strength-based family support plan and to coordinate interagency services. Team composition varies according to the needs of each child and family, but usually includes the child and family, a family support representative, and (as needed) representatives from mental hygiene, education, juvenile justice, probation, health, and other county child and family services systems.
Each Tier I team works collaboratively with the family to develop an individualized family support plan that is: family-focused and family driven; built on child and family strengths; and comprehensive, including appropriate services and supports from appropriate systems and natural supports from the community.
The principles of operation that guide Tier I Teams are the same as those of Tiers II and III. The application of these principles shapes the way services are planned for, delivered, and every aspects of the process through which children and families are served. The principles and operational guidelines for Tier I Teams are wonderfully presented in the training manuals presented below. Please use and distribute these documents freely to any and all participants in your child and family serving systems.
Child and Family Team Training Manual —Developed for CCSI by Westchester County. The full document is quite large (651 KB).
Onondaga County Parent Partner Training Curriculum Part 1
Onondaga County Parent Partner Training Curriculum Part 2—A very comprehensive manual for facilitators and parent partners that includes many forms and other documents related to the day-to-day processes and management of CCSI.
Broome County Facilitator Training Manual —Developed by the Broome County CCSI Training Committee.
