VFA Survey to Increase Access to Mental Health Services
Voice For Adoption (VFA) needs your help! We're working to create policy recommendations that will increase accessibility to mental health and substance abuse services. Your experiences are crucial to our work--take our short survey to contribute to VFA advocacy on behalf of our nation's waiting children. This survey is for all parties involved in the child welfare system: a child welfare employee, an advocate, alumni, family, or any other connections to the child welfare system. Your opinion matters and we want to hear from you.
Our nation faces a mental health and substance use crisis, which has only worsened with the pandemic. Anxiety, psychological distress, overdose deaths, and mental health emergencies have all increased over the past year and a half. Chairman Wyden and Ranking Member Crapo are looking to address barriers to mental health care by improving policy relating to behavioral health for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and ACA marketplace beneficiaries.
Four main areas for improvement are
1) Workforce - explore options to address the behavioral health workforce shortage, increase health professional diversity, and more
2) Integration, Coordination, and Access - support care integration and coordination efforts and ensure that historically underserved communities have equitable access to culturally and linguistically appropriate care
3) Parity - improve oversight, data reporting, and enforcement of mental health parity laws and access potential shortcomings in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP programs
4) Telehealth - expand access to telehealth services while maintaining safeguards for beneficiaries and taxpayer dollars
Your input is crucially important for the improvement of these policies and to ensure that all Americans can have access to high-quality mental health and substance use disorder services
