Benchmarks' Child Welfare Webinar
April 8, 2021
Upcoming Benchmarks' Webinars
Please align your calendars with the dates below.

Benchmarks' Friday Membership Webinar
Andrew Clendenin, United Healthcare, Joins Karen McLeod
Date: Friday, April 16, 2021
Time:  8:30 am thru 9:30 am

Benchmarks' Friday Membership Webinar
Date: Friday, April 30, 2021
Time:  8:30 am thru 9:30 am

Benchmarks' Child Welfare Webinar
Lisa Cauley Joins Karen McLeod
Date: May 13, 2021
Time: 8:00 am thru 9:00 am

Long-Term Care Update
1. Updated LTCF Visitation & Quarantine Guidance
The Guidance for Visitation and Quarantine in Long Term Care Facilities has been updated to recommend that facilities conduct a risk assessment to consider whether quarantine for residents is needed following off-campus visits. Specific language is below:
  • Quarantine is not required for off-campus visits of short duration (e.g, less than 24 hours). However, facilities should consider quarantine for unvaccinated residents. Facilities should conduct a risk assessment taking into consideration the activity of the resident while visiting off-campus. 
Elements to consider in this risk assessment include:
  • COVID transmission (e.g., county positivity rate) in the community that the resident will be visiting
  • Individual and community (known or perceived) adherence to infection control recommendations (3 W’s)
  • There is generally less risk in visiting a single household than a medium or large event that involves more than one household (including but not limited to a group dinner, wedding, or graduation)
  • Vaccination status of residents in the facility as well as close contacts to the resident outside of the facility
 
2. Long-Term Care Facility On-Going COVID-19 Vaccination
Third dose clinics are currently underway, and CVS and Walgreens have agreed to providing first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to any facility residents and staff members that have not yet had the opportunity to be vaccinated during the third clinics. The CVS/Walgreens partnership is limited to only three clinics so, facilities will have to find an alternate source for second doses for all facility residents and staff members vaccinated during the third clinics. Many long-term care pharmacies throughout the state have been enrolled as COVID-19 vaccine providers to ensure the availability of vaccination services to long-term care facilities once the federal program has ended.

If your facility currently works with a long-term care pharmacy, please contact them to coordinate any needed vaccination services your facility may require. If you do not have a pharmacy partner that can provide ongoing vaccinations, the contact information for long-term care pharmacies that are willing to assist with your facilities vaccination needs has been provided. (LTC Pharmacy Contact List is at the top of this announcement and here)

NC Medicaid's Managed Care Quality Strategy Posted for Public Comment
NC Medicaid has posted an updated draft of NC Medicaid’s Managed Care Quality Strategy for public comments until May 6, 2021.
 
The strategy details the Department’s goals to improve the health of North Carolinians through an innovative, whole-person centered and well-coordinated system of care and measurement of quality, which addresses both medical and non-medical drivers of health. The Department’s Quality Strategy details Medicaid Managed Care aims, goals and objectives for quality management and improvement and details specific quality improvement (QI) initiatives that are priorities for the Department.
 
The updated Quality Strategy now incorporates the quality activities of all managed care plans, including the Behavioral Health I/DD Tailored Plans, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) Tribal Option and Community Care of North Carolina. 
 
The North Carolina Medicaid Managed Care Quality Strategy update draft is attached here and available on the Quality Management and Improvement webpage. To comment on the strategy, please email [email protected].
NC's State Consumer and Family Advisory Committee
(SCFAC) Meeting: April 14, 2021

Date: Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Time: 9:00 am thru 1:00 pm

April 5, 2021 COVID-19 Stakeholder Update
This update is a regular communication to Medicaid and NC Health Choice providers to share statewide COVID-19 announcements and information. Please look for future updates to arrive through NCTracks.

PRESS RELEASES since the last update include:
 
NEW resources since the last update include:
 
UPDATED guidance since the last update includes:
 
UPDATED reports since the last update include:

NEW EVENTS ADDED to the community testing events page 
 
This edition of CBX highlights National Child Abuse Prevention Month (NCAPM). Read about the latest updates to the NCAPM website, Resource Guide, and more. We also spotlight resources and articles centered on scaling up title IV-E prevention programs, how educators can continue to prevent child maltreatment during virtual learning by supporting and engaging families, and the benefits of multidisciplinary collaboration in prevention efforts.
Read about the Children's Bureau's newly appointed Associate Commissioner, Aysha E. Schomburg; a project intended to help the Children's Bureau in its work to assist states, communities, and tribes in building, implementing, and evaluating proactive, strengths-based prevention strategies; information about new federal pandemic relief funding for youth and young adults involved with the foster care system; and a brief listing of the latest updates to the Children's Bureau website.
We feature a guide from the Capacity Building Center for Tribes on obtaining title IV-E funding and lessons learned from tribes who have undergone the process, an article from AdoptUSKids on the barriers prospective foster and adoptive families face during the licensing process and how to overcome them, and a brief listing of the latest updates from the Children's Bureau's technical assistance partners.
We highlight a study that compares child maltreatment statistics between urban and rural areas and an article that discusses the effectiveness of the Safe Environment for Every Kid prevention model.
This section of CBX offers publications, articles, reports, toolkits, and other resources that provide either evidence-based strategies or other concrete help to child welfare and related professionals.
This section of CBX provides a quick list of interesting resources, such as websites, videos, journals, funding or scholarship opportunities, or other materials that can be used in the field or with families.
Introducing the 2021/2022 Prevention Resource Guide Thriving Children and Families: Prevention With Purpose: Webinar
This webinar introduces the 2021/2022 Prevention Resource Guide, the most significant revision of this popular Office on Child Abuse and Neglect publication in more than 15 years.

Presenters will describe how this year’s guide builds on the foundation of previous guides, including the protective factors, while introducing exciting new concepts, examples, and strategies.
This year’s Resource Guide is all about generating constructive conversations – with caregivers, within organizations and communities, and across society as a whole. The webinar will feature a panel sharing examples of prevention strategies aimed at promoting community and societal norms that support positive parenting.

Presenters include:
  • Sharon McKinley, M.S.W., L.M.S.W., child welfare program specialist, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau, Office on Child Abuse and Neglect
  • Jill Currie, principal, Jill Currie Consulting
  • Angie Guinn, M.P.H., behavioral scientist, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of Violence Prevention
  • Rahil Briggs, Psy.D., national director of the HealthySteps program, ZERO TO THREE

Date: Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Time: 2:00 pm
Don't miss out! Register now and invite your colleagues to join.
Solutions to common challenges when evaluating kinship navigator programs
During the pandemic, child welfare agencies have had greater flexibility to use federal funds to implement and evaluate their kinship navigator programs. A new Child Trends brief can help child welfare agencies understand how to address common evaluation challenges so that evaluations can identify the positive impacts of these programs. Generating rigorous evidence is critical for securing long-term federal funding for kinship navigator programs under the Family First Act and ensuring that services effectively meet families’ needs. 

In new research, Child Trends reproductive health and family formation experts investigated inconsistent responses to survey items about unprotected sex among Black and Latinx women ages 18 to 20. The research finds that participants faced challenges in understanding questions about unprotected sex on a survey fielded by Child Trends. The authors used this research to improve survey questions and improve the consistency of responses in a six-month follow-up survey.

The pandemic has taken a significant financial toll on child care providers and the availability of care, not only because of reductions in tuitions and fees, but also in per-child subsidies provided by the government. A new brief recommends data sources and other information leaders should use to craft and implement effective financial supports for this critical sector.
OCD in Children, and How to Treat It
People often use the term OCD casually, to describe someone who likes things to be perfect. But kids who really have OCD are compelled to do things a certain way to avoid very distressing thoughts. They develop rituals, like counting or lining things up or repeated hand-washing, in order to suppress these painful worries. But it only works temporarily. The anxiety gets worse, and over time OCD can overwhelm them — and their families, too.

This week we round up resources on OCD, and how to treat it. We cover some of the confusing behaviors associated with the disorder, as well as a form of OCD called PANS that comes on very suddenly and severely, usually after an infection like Strep. And finally we look at hoarding in kids, which is related to OCD, even though it doesn’t look anything like perfectionism.
USDA Grants for Distance Learning and Telemedicine
June 4. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will make 90 awards with total funding of $44.5 million to improve distance learning and telemedicine in rural areas. Eligible applicants include state, local, and tribal governments; nonprofit organizations; school districts and institutions of higher education.
IMI: Medicaid State Plan Amendments & Waivers
The Institute for Medicaid Innovation (IMI), a non-profit, nonpartisan, national research and policy organization, has released a new report providing information on how these mechanisms are used to support innovative Medicaid program payment and delivery system models. The new report, “Medicaid 201: An Overview of State Plan Amendments & Waivers” is the second release in IMI’s “Introduction to Medicaid” series. This report builds upon the previous publication, “Medicaid 101: An Overview of the Program.” The new resource outlines five common Medicaid waivers including a comparison table of all waivers implemented throughout the country. The report also explores the current use of 1135 waivers to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
The full report is available here.




NIMH Expert Dr. Mary Rooney Discusses Bipolar Disorder in Adolescents and Young Adults
In recognition of World Bipolar Day, NIMH hosted a livestream event on bipolar disorder in adolescents and young adults on March 30, 2021. Clinical psychologist and chief of the Child and Adolescent Psychosocial Interventions Research Program at NIMH, Mary Rooney, Ph.D., discussed bipolar disorder in adolescents and young adults. Also, Dr. Rooney discussed some of the challenges that the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has presented for individuals living with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses.





Identifying Bias and Addressing Stigma in the Clinical Setting

Upcoming Events
New: Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Introducing the 2021/2022 Prevention Resource Guide Thriving Children and Families: Prevention With Purpose

Time:  2:00 pm
 
Tuesday, April 13, 2021
Medicaid Transformation 101 Webinar

Time:  4:00 pm thru 5:00 pm
 
New: Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Introduction to NC Medicaid Ombudsman Webinar for Beneficiaries and Members

Time:  12:00 pm thru 1:00 pm
 
Friday, April 16, 2021
Benchmarks' Friday Membership Webinar
Andrew Clendenin, United Healthcare Joins Karen McLeod

Time:  8:30 am thru 9:30 am
 
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Bridging The Gap From Data To Data-Driven Performance

Time:  10:00 am thru 11:15 am
 
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
Integrated, Exposure-Based Treatment of Co-Occurring PTSD and Substance Use Disorders

Time:  12:00 pm thru 1:00 pm
 
Thursday, April 22, 2021
Private Agency Training Info

Time:  12:00 pm thru 1:00 pm
 
New: April 27, 2021
"Youth Transitions Partnership" 

Time: 1:00 pm thru 2:00 pm
 
April 28, 2021
The Ethics of Feedback within the Therapeutic Milieu 

Time: 9:30 am thru 11:45 am
 
Wednesday, April 28, 2021
Understanding the Harm Reduction Approach:
 Principles and Practice

Time: 12:00 pm thru 1:00 pm

These sessions are approved for continuing education credits for doctors, nurses, and social workers (live attendance only). The University of Vermont designates each session of this internet live activity for a maximum of:
  • 1 AMA PRA Category 1 credit(s)TM: each physician should claim only those credits commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity;
  • up to 1 Nursing Contact Hours; and 
  • 1 general continuing education credits for social workers completing this course
  • 1 Interprofessional Continuing Education (IPCE) Credit     
Wednesday, May 26, 2021
Developing New VBP Services That Increase Quality & Decrease Service Costs 

Time:  10:00 am thru 11:15 am