Assessing Financial Readiness

While reviewing your organization’s financial readiness, Hayes (2005) stresses that the decision to use evidence-based practices is one that requires staff time and costs to:

• Identify the most appropriate evidence-based practices to meet needs of target populations
• Design and implement the use of those practices within the agency
• Collect, aggregate, and report the fidelity and outcomes of those practices
• Interpret the results to redesign or enhance the use of protocols
• Evaluate the direct costs of the use of the practices
• Evaluate the continued commitment to use the practices based on their outcomes and costs

Such commitment of staff time and funds necessitates that the practice produce the desired outcomes for children and families and be cost effective. Sound planning is at the base of incorporating and sustaining evidence-based and promising practices within the larger system of care.

Helpful Links:

Recent publications provide guidance for administrators in this area:

• A Self Assessment and Planning Guide: Developing a Comprehensive Financing Plan
  
  This guide was developed as part of a larger study to increase understanding of financing structures and strategies to support effective systems of care. The self assessment and planning guide was designed to guide service systems and individual sites in assessing their current financing structures and strategies, and to prioritize a strategic financing plan for moving forward. It provides a means for projecting possible outcomes that are to be achieved and strategies for achieving those outcomes.



• Public Financing of Home and Community Services for Children and Youth with Serious Emotional Disturbance: Selected State Strategies
  
  This monograph provides information about sources of federal funding for child mental health services and profiles state approaches to financing home and community based services, including:
• Medicaid Home and Community Based waivers
• Medicaid Rehabilitation Option
• Case rates used by designated case management entities for high risk populations
• The TEFRA option


• The Washington State Institute for Public Policy 2004 report on the cost effectiveness of several evidence-based practices for prevention and intervention

References

Armstrong, M.I., Pires S.A., McCarthy, J., Stroul, B.A., Wood, G.M., & Pizzigati, K.
(2006). A self-assessment and planning guide: Developing a comprehensive financing plan (RTC study 3: Financing structures and strategies to support effective systems of care, FMHI pub. #235-01). Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute (FMHI), Research and Training Center for Children’s Mental Health.

Hayes, R.A. (2005). Evaluating readiness to implement evidence-based practice. In C.E.
Stout & R.A. Hayes (Eds.), The evidence-based practice: Methods, models, and tools for mental health professionals (pp. 255 - 279). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Ireys, H.T., Pires, S., & Lee, M. (2006).  Public financing of home and community services for children and youth with serious emotional disturbances: Selected state strategies. (2006). Washington, DC: Office of Disability, Aging and Long Term Care Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.