When Michigan’s child welfare system assumes responsibility for a child — whether they are waiting for adoption or foster care or they are experiencing abuse or neglect — ensuring that the receive the right mental health care is essential.
 
Robert Sheehan“Kids in the child welfare system have experienced trauma, sometimes repeated or chronic trauma,” says Robert Sheehan, CEO, Community Mental Health Association of Michigan (CMHA). “Good mental health care can include training parents with how to deal with kids who've experienced trauma and training the primary care provider in that mental health treatment.”
 
Mental health care does not always mean psychotherapy or family-based counseling. Sheehan explains that a caring and loving home can help children overcome their traumas. However, when loving care is not enough, a trained therapist or psychiatrist can be vital.
 
“That's what our community mental health system provides,” Sheehan says. “Trauma can have an impact throughout your life in terms of engagement with your family, your loved ones, doing well in school, choosing a partner, raising your own family, or seeking and holding employment. All those things are impacted by untreated trauma.”
Collaborations help child welfare staff to connect children to needed services.
According to Sheehan, Michigan’s community mental health (CMH) agencies are the lead in providing mental health care for children in the child welfare system.
 
“Our community mental health system is the mental health safety net for all Medicaid enrollees — beneficiaries in every county in the state,” Sheehan says. “Most, if not all, of the children in the child welfare system have Medicaid as their insurer.”
 
A 2024 CMHA survey found that CMHs were serving more than 60% of children involved with child welfare services. —  with the remaining 40% being infants too young to receive mental health care.
 
“I was stunned when we looked at the data,” Sheehan says. “The numbers were eye-popping.”
 
CMHA advocates for children's mental health in general, working closely with the Association of Children’s Mental Health.
 
“We've been a longtime advocate for community-based care, for evidence-based care, for early intervention, starting with infant mental health — which is mental health care aimed at the parents and in partnership with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ Bureau of Children's Coordinated Health Policy & Supports [BCCHPS],” Sheehan says. 
 
Summit Pointe South provides services to children.In 2023 and 2024, MDHHS and CMHs from across the state have collaborated on a series of day-long sessions where child welfare workers and CMH staff learn about each other's systems and build stronger partnerships.
 
“Using feedback received from participants, the 2025 series focuses on transitions of care for children, youth and their families and will include presentations about state and local resources and discussions that will highlight strategies used to develop successful local partnerships and the impact on transitions of care,” says MDHHS public information officer Lynn Sutfin. “This collaboration will help enable child welfare staff to effectively seek out and make referrals for needed services and supports for children involved in the child welfare system and prepare staff within CMH agencies to best serve and support system-involved children and their caregivers.”
 
Sutfin shares that having knowledge about available CMH services, eligibility and intake processes helps child welfare staff to prepare and support foster parents, relatives, or extended family to care for children and youth with complex behavioral health needs.
 
“Understanding the foster care system and the needs of the children and caregivers served will help CMH staff identify and deliver needed services and supports when and where they are needed,” she says. “Overall, it will assist in better coordinated care.”

Angela Deal leads the children and youth services team at Summit Pointe.
 Summit Pointe: Collaboration before crisis
 
Calhoun County's CMH agency, Summit Pointe, has been actively collaborating with its local child welfare system for even longer.
 
“We've spent a lot of time in the last five years building that relationship with our local DHHS department. We meet monthly with their admin staff,” says Angela Deal, Summit Pointe director of youth services.
 
The collaboration has helped both agencies to better serve the children in their care. When children are placed in foster homes, residential facilities, or shelters, working together prevents the kids from falling through the cracks if they are placed in a different county. And, when children are discharged or returned home, DHHS keeps Summit Pointe in the loop so they can provide needed follow-up services without delay.
 
“Before, it had taken youth a couple of months to enter mental health services. By the time they had gotten to our door, things had become pretty difficult and complex,” Deal says. “It is more difficult to get services started in a crisis situation.”
 
The collaboration also helps Summit Pointe serve youth who are ineligible for Medicaid but covered by a state-issued Medicaid waiver.
 
“We make sure that waiver services are being offered to meet those youths’ elevated and more complex needs,” Deal says. “So, there's a ton more collaboration to make sure they're getting what they need.”
 
Summit Pointe’s goal is to keep kids in their home, in their community, with their friends, and in their schools — removal from any of these is an additional trauma. Deal oversees intensive community-based services that involve youth and their families multiple times a week. Summit Pointe also provides therapy in homes and schools, and staff often attend court hearings with children.  Among its staff, two youth peer support specialists and one parent peer support specialist provide additional support that kids and families often can better relate to.
 
“We're where we need to be," Deal says. "We're a flexible team that's out and about, meeting their needs, and we see them often. We have intensive therapy, and we have wraparound services — they may have a probation officer, a psychiatrist, a therapist, and the school working with them. Wraparound pulls that team together so everybody's on the same page.”

CMHs like Summit Pointe provide spaces where children feel comfortable.
 Collaboration makes care more accessible

In West Michigan, many children’s mental health services are subcontracted through local providers. One of the main players in Kent County, Wedgwood Christian Services’ residential treatment programs take youth who have been unsuccessful in community placements or have nowhere else to live.
 
“We work very closely with Michigan Department of Health and Human Services through foster care, as well as with CPS [Child Protective Services], because some of our clients are referred here for abuse and neglect, removed from their homes," says  Jason Lheureux, Wedgwood’s director of residential programs.
 
Lheureux points out that because mental health care can be expensive, collaborations among the MDHHS, CMHs, and agencies like Wedgwood can make that care more accessible.
 
“If you're bleeding and you have a broken arm, you go to the hospital and you receive treatment. But if your heart is hurting, that's on the inside, and sometimes it's not seen, and it also can be harder to get the right help,” he says.  "I could never understand what it's like to be homeless, in juvenile detention, or to deal with the difficult situations they have. Showing our clients respect and sense of ownership over their own story with patience and willingness to listen allows each case to be its own living, breathing, little, tiny cactus that needs to grow in its own way, in its own time.”
 
In the long run, when community mental health works hand in hand with the child welfare system, Michigan’s communities benefit. Mentally healthy children do better in school, are less likely to get in trouble or abuse substances, find more success in careers, and are better parents when they start a family.
 
“It becomes a generational investment,” Sheehan concludes. “Without that investment, generational trauma spreads. I spread the trauma I experienced to my spouse, to my partner, to my kids, and to my coworkers. You want to address trauma early, not through blaming, but through support and mental health treatment. You don't punish a traumatized kid — you support a traumatized kid.”

Estelle Slootmaker spends most workdays as a journalist and book editor. You can contact her at [email protected] or www.constellations.biz. 

Photos by John Grap.
Robert Sheehan photo by Doug Coombe.

The MI Mental Health series highlights the opportunities that Michigan's children, teens, and adults of all ages have to find the mental health help they need, when and where they need it. It is made possible with funding from the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan, Center for Health and Research Transformation, LifeWays, Michigan Health and Hospital Association, Northern Lakes Community Mental Health Authority, OnPoint, Sanilac County Community Mental Health, St. Clair County Community Mental Health, Summit Pointe, and Washtenaw County Community Mental Health and Public Safety Preservation Millage.