Issue Brief 53 - 21st Century Cures Act

21st Century Cures Act Provisions

Related Initiatives in Connecticut

Requires states receiving mental health block grants to develop plans to promote the use of evidence-based practices that address the mental health needs of children across the state and to create a system of integrated care spanning social, educational, child welfare and judicial services.

Through the Connecticut Network of Care Transformation (CONNECT) initiative, funded by SAMHSA, Connecticut has created a partnership between families, state agencies, and service providers to support children and families in accessing the services they need in a timely and effective manner through an integrated network of care. Also, Connecticut is a national leader in using evidence-based practices to address the mental health needs of children. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) has worked with CHDI and other partners to disseminate or support an array of evidence-based treatments including seven designed to treat children’s trauma and mental health, with plans for adding more.  

Reauthorizes the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative (NCTSI) to support children recovering from trauma; authorizes grants that support the development of evidence-based practices and that identify and treat children’s mental and behavioral health conditions resulting from trauma; provides support for training initiatives that disseminate evidence-based and trauma-informed treatments to grantees, states, and service providers.

In Connecticut, CHDI has collaborated with state agencies, providers and others to build a comprehensive trauma-informed system of care, including workforce development, trauma screening, trauma services, access to evidence-based practices, and cross-system collaboration. The Early Childhood Trauma Collaborative (ECTC) was recently established in Connecticut to expand services to young children suffering from exposure to trauma. ECTC will disseminate four trauma focused evidence-based interventions for young children and will improve the capacity of Connecticut’s early childhood workforce to identify and treat trauma.  

Authorizes a new program to enhance infant and early childhood mental health promotion, intervention, and treatment programs; increases services for infants and children at significant risk or who have been diagnosed with a mental health condition; ensures that such programs and services are evidence-informed or evidence-based, and emphasizes maintaining supportive caregiver-child relationships. 

Connecticut policy makers, state agency officials, and providers have worked together to translate research on early childhood and infant attachment into effective policy solutions that improve skills and competencies among the mental health workforce and promote stable and nurturing relationships between children and caregivers. To promote early intervention, CHDI has worked to integrate mental health screening into early child care settings. CHDI’s Developmental Screening and Mid-Level Developmental Assessment initiatives help ensure social-emotional and other developmental concerns in young children are identified and addressed as early as possible.

Authorizes a new program to increase the percentage of mothers screened and treated for maternal depression within the first 12 months after giving birth, and to ensure that maternal screening takes place within pediatric primary care settings.

Pediatric primary care providers across Connecticut have significantly increased screening for maternal depression. CHDI has supported this increase by providing research, treatment information and screening tools for maternal depression to over 308 providers at 35 different child health practices.  

Prioritizes funds for educational programming and training that prepare students and professionals to work in integrated settings that include mental health, substance use, and primary care treatment, and to work in underserved settings; seeks to improve the skills and capacity of the mental health workforce to utilize evidence-based treatments and to integrate mental health services within primary care settings.

The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood (OEC) and the Connecticut Association for Infant Mental Health (CT-AIMH) have partnered with CHDI to develop Infant Mental Health Competencies for the early childhood workforce and to provide training to early care and education and health providers. The goal is to build competencies among the workforce and to actively promote infant and early childhood mental health in educational and healthcare settings.   

Authorizes new grants that promote the integration of primary health and mental health care settings and increase coordination between the two systems. These “Integration Incentive” grants give special attention to the integration of primary care and behavioral health care for children and adolescents with serious mental illness and co-occurring physical health conditions. 

CHDI promotes the linking of behavioral health and primary care through the Educating Practices In the Community (EPIC) program, which provides free and comprehensive training spanning 17 topics to help pediatric practices across the state meet the health and mental health needs of children. ACCESS Mental Health CT is another statewide program that offers free consultative services to primary care practitioners seeking assistance in providing behavioral health care services to children and adolescence, regardless of insurance. These programs have led to a significant increase in the number of children screened, treated and/or  referred for mental health services by a primary care physician.