OhioRISE mental health program coming to Stark County

A new state managed-care program is taking aim at the defects and shortcomings in the delivery of care to area youth with severe mental health and behavioral issues.

The program, called OhioRISE (Resilience through Integrated Systems and Excellence), is an initiative of the Ohio Department of Medicaid. OhioRISE is designed to enhance the method of providing mental-health care for children and young adults.

For the purposes of the program, the state is divided into 20 districts. Stark and Carroll counties are within an eight-county district being managed by the Jefferson County Educational Service Center in Steubenville. Under the OhioRISE program, Jefferson County Educational Service Center is regarded as a care management entity.

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OhioRise starting in Stark and Jefferson counties

"The objective is to serve youth that are in various (treatment) programs throughout the state," said Superintendent Charles "Chuck" Kokiko of the Jefferson County Educational Service Center. "We will identify kids that are in need.The program is going to go live on July 1. In the beginning we will be in Jefferson County and in Stark County."

OhioRise will function as a managed-care plan for the youths and their families.

Some of the youth enrolled in the OhioRISE program will be involved with the juvenile court system, substance abuse treatment, local mental health treatment and developmental disability programs. 

"This is an initiative that was put together because in Ohio we don't have the specialists or facilities to support children that have complex mental health needs," said Lisa Lawless, public information officer for Ohio Department of Medicaid. "There is no single entity that pulls all those child service resources together to create a unified care plan. There is a lot of support. But there is not one single person that knows how to navigate all those agencies to put it all together for the family."

It is an accepted notion that many youth with mental-health issues are being treated by various social service agencies. Occasionally the result is the treatments become too expensive for the families, and consequently the parents lose custody of their child. The youths often end up in group homes or in congregate living facilities.

"We want to keep the kids in their communities, keep them with their families," Kokiko said.

The Jefferson County Educational Service Center will get $1.11 million from the state to launch the program.

"We are looking to hire a director to oversee it," Kokiko said. "We are looking for someone with experience in care coordination, someone that is familiar with Medicaid and a track record of growing programs. This is a program that has to grow. Stark County would need around 60 care coordinators if this program gets up to the capacity that is expected."

Staff members that Kokiko will hire are to develop a holistic treatment plan for the youths rather than a fractured model. This will involve assessing the level of treatment needed. Also there will be development of individualized plans and coordinating all services across the various treatment providers.

Projected to serve 1,100 in Stark County

"Right now, the reality is everybody kind of has their own system that they do," Kokiko said.

Those receiving OhioRISE treatment are expected to be recipients of Medicaid.

"We will bill for the services we provide to the kids," Kokiko said.

The projection is there will be 1,100 youths enrolled in OhioRISE in Stark County and 88 enrolled from Carroll County.

"I think we are very fortunate in Stark County to have the mental-health services that we have available to the youths and families," said Judge Jim James of Stark County Family Court, which adjudicates juvenile criminal and child custody matters. "We are watching it (OhioRISE) closely. We have got some really good things in place here. If they want to supplement that, I am all for it."

A major provider of mental-health services for youths in Stark County currently is the Child & Adolescent Behavioral Health.

"We don't have a lot of details yet," said Joe French, executive director of Child & Adolescent Behavioral Health, about OhioRISE. "There is not a lot of information that has been shared yet. This county has been good in collaboration. Having an outside agency come in causes a little bit of nervousness. We will make it work to get these kids the services they need."

Along with Stark, Carroll and Jefferson counties, the other five counties in the cluster under Kokiko's authority are Monroe, Belmont, Harrison, Tuscarawas and Columbiana.

Jefferson County Educational Service Center is only public school entity selected to serve as a care management entity.

The others statewide are social service agencies, such as Coleman Health Services, which was awarded two care management entity contracts. One is to oversee OhioRISE in the Summit and Portage counties cluster. The other is to supervise the cluster of Ashland, Holmes, Richland and Wayne counties.

"What we were seeing is kids coming to school with more and more difficult issues," Kokiko said, explaining a reason why his office took interest in participating in the OhioRISE initiative. 

Reach Malcolm at 330-580-8305 or malcolm.hall@cantonrep.com

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