Comprehensive Community Services: Creating Access to Mental Health Care Regardless of Ability to Pay
When it comes to mental health care, there’s no one-size-fits all approach.
If you struggle with depression, anxiety, overwhelming stress, substance abuse or addiction and are on Medicaid, you may qualify for the Comprehensive Community Services (CCS) program.
The program is unique because it can be individually catered to the needs of each person.
WHAT IS CCS?
CCS is a voluntary psychosocial rehabilitative Medicaid program for eligible children and adults. CCS focuses on helping people who have a mental health and/or a substance use diagnosis on their journey to recovery.
“I think that our families appreciate CCS because we come to them,” said Sabrina Vermilyea, Wellpoint Care Network CCS service facilitator in West Bend. “We can be in a school meeting with the children or working collaboratively with the teachers. Families aren’t required to go out and find help. We bring the help to them, which I think sets us apart from an outpatient clinic. Our children have a high level of needs and trauma backgrounds. All of our therapists and providers are trained in Trauma Informed Care, which makes a huge difference.”
Another unique part of the CCS program is that there’s a conscious effort to also include the participant’s support system in the treatment plan.
“The team approach is one of the highlights,” said Greta Johansen, Wellpoint Care Network lead care coordinator for CCS Milwaukee. “We are able to work with families and caregivers of our enrollees. There’s a lot of collaboration.”
CCS differs from county to county.
Wellpoint Care Network works directly with the CCS programs in Milwaukee County and Washington County. We also provide therapeutic services to Waukesha, Dodge, Sheboygan and Ozaukee Counties.
In Milwaukee County, youth are eligible to qualify through the age of 23. They can then transition into the adult network.
“Milwaukee County is highly populated,” added Johansen. “Because of that, it’s important that we support that transition piece from adolescence to adulthood because we know that not everybody has the skills to be as independent right away.”
In Washington County, youth are eligible for the program through the age of 18. However, if they continue to attend high school programming, they can stay with CCS until the age of 21.
TYPES OF SERVICES AVAILABLE
There are a variety of services available to CCS enrollees.
Some of the more traditional services include talk therapy, psychiatry or medication management. But, there are also very unique services available like mentorship, equine therapy, music therapy, art therapy, occupational therapy and more.
“We connect families with different providers in the county that can support them,” said Johansen. “It’s not just Wellpoint Care Network. We’re a brick in a really awesome path, but there are a ton of other services and therapists that we can refer our families to.”
“It’s so inspiring to see the amount of people in our provider network, from mentors, therapists, job support specialists, equine therapists, people that have farms with horses who let our kids and our therapists work from there. It’s just really neat to see the vast network of people that want to work with this population.”
At Wellpoint Care Network, we can provide psychotherapy, occupational therapy (OT), art therapy and medication management to those in CCS.
“We’re able to refer directly to our Wellpoint Clinic in Milwaukee for various services,” added Johansen. “We have OT now, which is huge. It’s really neat to see how that can fit into treatment for our children and families. We also have an art therapist and offer school-based mental health. We’re very far reaching within our community.”
THE IMPACT OF CCS
The goal of the CCS program is to improve health, promote wellness, achieve personal goals and enhance an overall quality of life.
Our CCS service facilitators and care coordinators have seen first-hand the impact the program can have on its enrollees.
“I was working with a 17-year-old who had a lot of academic struggles,” said Vermilyea. “He could not function in any general education classes without becoming violent and aggressive towards peers or staff. We came together and developed his behavior intervention plan. We worked closely with the special education case manager and his teachers, and within a year, we got him regulated and doing coping strategies. He went from having zero employment skills to working successfully at Culver’s, which is where he’s still employed. He went from almost nonverbal in the community to going up to tables and cleaning them. I’ve seen him in his workplace try to problem solve and deal with people. He’s incorporating these life skills that he did not have prior to working with CCS.”
“There was also a ton of aggression in the home. He would be destructive, damage things or go after mom. Their relationship has since blossomed into this awesome, ‘I’m going to support you and you support me’ type of thing. He ended up moving out and going into a group home in West Bend and he’s had a ton of success there. He’s just flourished so much. And, if you had an opportunity to ask him, he would say, ‘CCS changed my life.’”
Success isn’t only measured within the individual. It can also come from parents or guardians.
“A couple of years ago, I was working with a young lady who speaks English and not a lot of Hmong,” said Johansen. “But her grandparents are her guardians and they’re from Laos and they only spoke Hmong. So, there was a language barrier in general, and due to their culture, the grandparents were really resistant to treatment. They didn’t understand mental health or why she was feeling a certain way. It turned out that around the same time of her being enrolled into CCS, she found out that she had childhood diabetes. And, there are so many symptoms of unregulated blood sugars that can affect mental health. So, we were able to work collaboratively with a therapist in our CCS network that is Hmong and spoke Hmong. He was able to be the therapist and not only talk with our enrollee in English during their sessions, but also explain to the grandparents what was going on and why, as well as give some context. It was really cool to see this family start to learn to understand, accept and value the mental health services. Now, she’s able to advocate a lot more for herself in general and with her family, which is huge. She’s still in the program and she’s doing exceptionally well. It’s really great to have providers in the network that have similar cultural and language backgrounds so that they’re able to work with families like this one.”
JOIN THE TEAM
Wellpoint Care Network is always looking for service facilitators and care coordinators to join our team.
By working with CCS, you too can help empower safe, healthy and meaningful lives for those in our community.
“I was a teacher for 20 years, so the decision to leave education was huge and it took me a long time to grapple with that,” said Vermilyea. “What I love about working at Wellpoint Care is that I’m still connected with children. The schools we work with are really accommodating to have us come in and give them support. And now, my focus is no longer on academic and test scores. My focus is on the mental health of students — their health and wellness. My goal is to make sure that they have the mental health to perform well academically, because we know that they can’t do this without being mentally healthy and having different strategies and regulation techniques.”
“Schools don’t have the resources to handle all of the mental health needs of their students and all of the barriers to learning that come with those things,” added Johansen. “What’s really neat about CCS is that we get to support a thriving community. I think that CCS truly is what communities need in order to be strong and support people to be able to live on their own, get their own jobs, have their own income, and overall, just manage their own lives.”
For a list of our current job opportunities, click here.
To learn more about CCS, click here.
