PATH: Offering Hope to Families and Help to Providers

Thanks to a new statewide initiative, Medicaid-enrolled children under the age of 21 with complex behavioral health needs in Illinois will be getting the care and support that they need.

PATH—Provider Assistance Training Hub—recently launched a series of trainings in response to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services’ new initiative, “Pathways to Success.”

The goal of the program is to improve family functioning and reduce caregiver stress.

“It provides access to an evidence-informed model of intensive care coordination and additional home and community-based services for children who have complex behavioral health needs and require intensive services and support,” says Matt Stinson, associate director of PATH. “PATH is responsible for training and supporting Medicaid providers in four new services.”

Those services are high fidelity wraparound and intensive care coordination, intensive home-based services, family peer support, and therapeutic mentoring.

“Intermediate and advanced booster trainings launched this spring and will continue to be developed in the coming year to ensure ongoing opportunities for learning as it relates to the launching of these new services,” Stinson says.

Coaching and Technical Assistance for Providers

In addition to the support offered through training, PATH will continue to develop technical assistance and coaching to providers of these new services as community providers begin delivery to families in their communities across the state of Illinois. A clinical quality review team is being established to assist in the fidelity monitoring and coaching efforts of PATH As collaborative efforts with continue to be developed. PATH continues to be responsible for the training of the IM+CANS and IM-CAT and delivers additional trainings such as Treatment Planning, Cultural Humility, and all Mobile Crisis Response-related courses.

“Our entire PATH team has been crucial in developing curriculum for training and providing coaching and support,” Stinson says. “I also want to acknowledge the work that our providers have done to begin in implementing these new services.”

Collaboration and Professional Growth

“Our PATH team has recently gone through a reorganizational effort, with the instructional design team moving to assist other Healthcare and Family Services work within the University of Illinois system,” Stinson says. “However, they remain an integral partner in the development of our curriculum.”

The number of staff at PATH has decreased, Stinson notes, but adds that all functions of the PATH team remain intact through their partnership with the Office of Medicaid Innovation and the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.

In the past year, PATH had three co-training teams present at the annual TCOM (Transformational Collaborative Outcome Management) Conference, which was held in New Orleans last September. Additionally, PATH’s family advocate specialists participated in the Nation Federation of Families Conference in Oklahoma City in November 2022.