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The Children's Enhancement Project

The closing of the Children’s Inpatient Unit at Western Missouri in November of 2008, presented a need to the children’s service agencies.

The Missouri Department of Mental Health (DMH), asked MARC to convene behavioral health stakeholders in Kansas City and the western region of Missouri to suggest recommendations for the reallocation of $1.2 million that had previously been used to support the children’s unit at Western Missouri.

Concurrent with this request, the MMHS group had been looking at the children’s services issue after having finished a detailed report regarding the adult service delivery system. As a result, a children’s services committee was formed within the MMHS group. The request of the DMH merged with this formation. This resulted in a larger group of children’s stakeholders examining the needs of the western region Children’s Services delivery system. The question was what to do with the children that were being served by the facility. The Children’s Enhancement Project (CEP) was created to answer that question.

CEP was designed to fill the gap left by the closing of the beds that served SED children. The targeted population is to include children and adolescents with co-occurring conditions. The goal is to serve these children with intensive “wraparound” services to decrease or eliminate the need for inpatient or residential services while improving their quality of life and functioning level.