Nearly 100 statewide leaders in the child-and-family services field—including government funders, elected officials, regulatory agencies and provider organizations—came to Hillside’s Rochester conference center location on September 16 for a daylong conference to explore solutions for youth with unmet complex needs.
The “Call to Action” conference was organized and led by the Monroe County Department of Human Services team, and facilitated by Lisette Burton, Chief Policy & Practice Advisor for the Association of Children’s Residential & Community Services.
Across New York State and nationwide, children and youth are boarding in hospitals for extended stays. Our continuum of care must include highly individualized interventions that can be adapted to youth with complex needs that may include intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), behavioral health challenges, and/or child welfare involvement.
“The current continuum of care is not meeting the needs of youth and families,” according to Adam Bello, Monroe County Executive (pictured above). The purpose of the conference, he added, was to foster “not only cooperation, but collaboration” in solution-finding among regional and state agencies and leaders.
The conference included an interactive panel discussion, led by Burton, and brainstorming sessions among attendees to explore potential remedies through the lenses of needed resources, relationships, regulation, legislation, financing—and most importantly, impact.
A newly formed Action Team will help model ways forward for urgent collective action in other jurisdictions across the state.
Maria Cristalli, Hillside President & CEO, called the conference “an essential step toward action in addressing an issue that couldn’t be more urgent.”
“As one of the largest child-and-family services agencies in the state, Hillside sees every day the consequences of communities having too few resources to support the complex needs of youth in crisis—and we know we’re not alone in what we see,” she added. “We’re grateful to Monroe County and our state partners for their commitment to coming to the table and working with us to find long-term solutions. Children and youth need our help.”