Call or visit your Congressmember to support the Keeping Families Together Act!

Decisions will soon be made about the future of the Keeping Families Together Act (KFTA) in Congress. Please schedule a visit or make a phone call today to make your case for Keeping Families Together.

The Keeping Families Together Act was recently introduced in both houses of congress as a way to end the practice of requiring families to give up custody of their child to access mental health treatment. Below is a summary of key provisions of the bill.

“To amend the Public Health Service Act to establish a State family support grant program to end the practice of parents giving legal custody of their seriously emotionally disturbed children to State agencies for the purpose of obtaining mental health services for those children.

Provide grants to states to create infrastructure to support and sustain statewide systems of care to serve these children more effectively and efficiently while keeping them with their families.

Establish a federal interagency task force to examine and make recommendations regarding mental health issues in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems.

Remove statutory barriers that currently prevent more states from using the Medicaid home-and community-services waiver to serve children with serious mental health conditions.”

To view a summary of the bill, provided by The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, go to: http://www.bazelon.org/issues/children/kfta_summary.pdf
You can access the entire bill by visiting: http://www.bazelon.org/govdocs/s1704kfta.htm

Urge your congressmember to sign on to KFTA by going to: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/bazelon/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23

Not being able to access a full range of services often causes families to rely on crisis services, hospitalization, and residential care which often frequently leading to custody relinquishment in order to access services. A comprehensive interagency plan would better direct our resources to those services that families need most, reducing the need for crisis services, helping children recover and keep families together.

For more information contact: Ruth Foster, Director of Public Policy, Families Together in NYS at 888-326-8644 or rfoster@ftnys.org or

Pat Hunt, Senior Policy Associate, Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health, 207-225-2435, pdh@megalink.net