Mental Health U
Mental Health U is a podcast dedicated to demystifying and destigmatizing mental health issues. If you or someone you know is struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, or some other mental health issue, then this podcast is for you.
Mental Health U
Making lives better for families: Keshia Valentine on Transforming Youth Mental Health with OhioRISE
Embark on a journey into the heart of mental health care with us today as we're joined by the insightful Kesha Valentine, a licensed social worker whose expertise with the Ohio Rise program at Unison Health is nothing short of inspiring. Through Kesha's eyes, we glimpse the transformative power of a program dedicated to children with complex behavioral health needs, a power that's magnified by the commitment to a family-first methodology. What does it take to revolutionize care for these families, integrating therapy, child protective services, and the juvenile justice system? It's all about championing the voices of those often unheard, the children and families at the center of it all—and that's exactly what you'll discover in this episode.
As the conversation unfolds, we reveal the behind-the-scenes heroes: care coordinators like Kesha, who tirelessly weave together services across various settings to ensure no child slips through the cracks. You'll learn about Unison Health's innovative approaches, including a respite program that turns family and friends into certified caregivers, offering a beacon of hope for those navigating the stormy seas of high needs. Kesha's story and the stories of those she serves remind us of the vital role of these coordinators in shaping brighter futures, one child, one family at a time. Join us for this heartening exploration of how one program, Ohio Rise, is lighting up lives and fostering resilience within communities across the Buckeye State.
Being able to assist her with something such as respite, giving her a break, being able to utilize her adult children, and they're able to get paid to come in and care for care for this kiddo and While she takes a shower, you know, they're able to make sure that he's not running out in the street. So we really are incorporating everyone that the family can possibly think of to help them function and remain in their communities.
Bill Emahiser:Hello and welcome. I'm Bill Emahiser and you're listening to Mental Health U the podcast dedicated to Demystifying and destigmatizing mental health issues. So if you or someone you know is struggling with depression and anxiety, trauma or some other mental health issue, then this podcast is for you. This episode is proudly sponsored by unison health, dedicated to making lives better through compassionate, quality mental health and addiction treatment services. Learn more at unison health org. I am truly excited for today's show. It's my distinct pleasure to welcome Kesha Valentine, licensed social worker and care coordinator supervisor with the Ohio Rise program at Unison Health. Kesha Valentine has existed for over a decade at Unison Health. Kesha Valentine has exemplified the values of empathy, compassion and professionalism that are the cornerstone of social work. Her unwavering dedication to improving the quality of life for those she serves is truly inspirational. Welcome, Kesha. How are you today?
Kesha Valentine:Hi Bill, thank you, thank you. Thank you that that introduction. Wow, sometimes I don't. I don't hear those things about myself. So it's it's quite a pleasure I'm doing well today. I am super excited about being able to meet with you and be on here and talk about what it is that I'm doing in this amazing program.
Bill Emahiser:Wonderful. Well, why don't we get started? Why don't you tell us a little bit about your professional experience and your role as a care coordinator?
Kesha Valentine:Supervisor okay, well, my professional experience started about 13 14 years ago. I am a licensed social worker, as you stated before, and in my years of experience I've had a ton of experience with child-serving agencies. I've had experience as being a licensed clinician, a therapist for children. I've worked with children and families experiencing both substance, substance use and mental health conditions. I've also had the pleasure of working for child protective services and some other specialized programs that serve youth. So being a part of Ohio Rise is certainly a next step in my career path.
Bill Emahiser:This Ohio Rise program is relatively new and and some folks may not even know what it is, so could you tell us what? What is this program called Ohio Rise?
Kesha Valentine:Yeah, actually we are a year and three months in Ohio. Rise is it's a specialized program. It stands for resilience through integrated systems and excellence, and it's exactly that. This is a program that has been implemented across the state of Ohio. We are in all 88 counties, and unison has had the pleasure of being able to service nine of those counties, which include Lucas, fulton, williams, henry Van Wert, mercer, pauline, putnam and Defiance, and what this program does is it services managed care program. It's a managed care program that focuses on children and youth who have complex behavioral health and multi-system needs.
Bill Emahiser:What makes this program so unique?
Kesha Valentine:Well, this program is really unique, bill, because it focuses on young people who need specialized care, and when we say specialized care, that can include anything from intensive and moderate care, coordination, improved home-based treatment so that could be like home-based therapy. Some of our kids need inpatient psychiatric residential treatment. We have primary flex funds that we have that we use, utilize with our children. These kids that we service have needs that go above and beyond your normal typical behavioral health needs.
Bill Emahiser:But what makes this program so important?
Kesha Valentine:Well, what makes this so important is young people with complex behavioral health needs benefit more from intensive services and a coordinated approach to planning their care.
Kesha Valentine:So what we do here at Ohio Rise is we work with multiple providers and organizations to make sure a child or youth has their needs met through a care plan that values the kids and families' voices and choices. What that may look like is, say, for instance, working a child has multi-system involvement, and we've said that a couple of times, so I kind of want to go a little bit more in depth with that. Multi-system involvement may mean that they have a therapist, they may be working with the Lucas County Board of Development with Disabilities, they may be working with Child Protective Services or the Juvenile Justice System. These are kids who have multi-system involvement, and what we do at Ohio Rise is we bring all of those providers together and we get them to speak one language, which is the language of the family. What is it that the family needs and how can we get everyone to work together, understand what one program is doing versus the other and really improve the lives of these children and families much quicker than if they were having an individual approach to care?
Bill Emahiser:I'm just thinking. If I'm a parent of a child with some special needs and all these different programs are involved, I might be feeling frustrated or overwhelmed.
Kesha Valentine:Yes.
Bill Emahiser:And so this program, it sounds like, even though the identified client is the child. It sounds like there's some benefit here to the parent, to log to this program.
Kesha Valentine:Can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely so. Although the child is the client, this is definitely a family approach. One of the big parts of this program is we hold what's called child and family meetings team meetings. This is a child and family approach. We really don't see any progress without including the family, and with Ohio Rise, we not only include the immediate family, but we also look at the extended family, we look at the community, we look at those friends who can be a part of coordinating this care and making sure that these families are successful. We find very unique ways to do that and there are so many people that are included in our child and family teams.
Bill Emahiser:You've mentioned multi systems. Yes, and we obviously folks that these are for kids that have some special needs, but can you maybe hone that in and speak specifically to who qualifies to be in the program?
Kesha Valentine:Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with the basics. Right so any child or youth that meets eligibility for Medicaid. They have to meet eligibility for Medicaid and have complex behavioral health needs measured by the Ohio Cans assessment and are between the ages of zero to 20. Okay, so what does that look like? Right so I'll just give an example.
Kesha Valentine:We have a kiddo right now that we work with who is age nine. He qualifies for Medicaid, right so he meets that requirement. He meets that age requirement and his complex behavioral health needs are that he is. He has a diagnosis of being on the autism spectrum and with that he has no, no understanding of strange or danger, right Among some very other complex things you know, running out in the streets and things like that he just is not aware of because of his condition. This kiddo is involved with the Lucas County Board of Developmental Disabilities, he's in a specialized school. So, right there, those are multi-systems.
Kesha Valentine:Right, this kiddo, we are able to service him through care coordination by helping his family identify those gaps that are missing, that can keep the family functioning. Mom came in very frustrated because she, you know, being able to care for a nine-year-old, that with a condition that's still very new to some of our communities. It's a condition that we're still learning a whole lot about being able to assist her with something such as respite giving her a break, being able to utilize her adult children, and they're able to get paid to come in and care for this kiddo while she takes a shower. They're able to make sure that he's not running out in the street. So we really are incorporating everyone that the family can possibly think of to help them function and remain in their communities.
Kesha Valentine:Another great benefit that this kiddo, that we were able to utilize with him is just this past summer he was able to attend a specialized summer program that is just for kids who have difficulties like him, and this program. It's quite expensive, but we were able to utilize primary flex funds, which is something that is only available to kids who are a part of Ohio Rise, to help pay for that cost. So this program is really unique and it really does work with the different providers. We also, with this kiddo, were able to work with the Lucas County Board of Developmental Disabilities and getting some other things for safety in the home and things like that. So, although we're not providers, we work with some really great providers in our communities.
Kesha Valentine:We assist our families with gaining access to resources that they may not even know exist and to utilize the resources that they already have. Sometimes they just don't know what questions to ask. Right, our care coordinators are able to go in with them and help them with some of that. Sometimes our care coordinators even make those phone calls and say, hey, you know, I have this parent who may be so frustrated, for you know, I have called all these places and I didn't get any answers. Some of our care coordinators make those calls with them, teach them how to be autonomous and caring for their self and their kids. So it's a very unique program and I'm so excited about it.
Bill Emahiser:Mental Health? U is brought to you by Unison Health. Unison Health making lives better Keshia. What are the challenges or gaps in the counties that OhioRide serves?
Kesha Valentine:Well, I would say each county has their own unique challenges. One of those challenges that I can say that has been pretty consistent among all of the counties is our lack of intensive home-based services for our youth, our children and youth respite providers, right People that are able to give our families a break, a time to be able to do those things that they're not able to do for themselves because they are caring for their children with high needs. Something that we also have found that we're lacking in our communities is mobile response services, just things like that having an emergency service be able to come out to come to you when you're having those challenges in the home and be able to teach you how to work through those challenges with your youth and your child. These are just some of the challenges that we're facing right now and as an organization, we are coming up with some very unique ways to tackle those challenges.
Bill Emahiser:Yeah, filling those gaps, yeah filling those gaps.
Kesha Valentine:We at Unison are piloting right now a program, a respite program, which is unique to the state of Ohio because we are the first county to be piloting this program, where we are giving the opportunity to family and friends to become certified and be able to provide respite for our children and youth, and the kiddo that I spoke with earlier he is one of our youth who is able to benefit from our respite program. So these are just some of the challenges. I could go on and on about the challenges, but I'd like to think more about the positive things that we're doing, because we are knocking them down one by one.
Bill Emahiser:If I have a care coordinator, what makes my care coordinator different than, say, a mental health or substance abuse case manager or therapist or psychiatrist? What is the difference?
Kesha Valentine:So there is a very, very significant difference. Our care coordinators are not providers. They're not therapists. I like to look at them as kind of like an assistant to the family. They have a working relationship with the therapist, they have a working relationship with the case managers and psychiatrists, with all of the other systems and providers, but they are not providing a service. What makes them unique is that they understand everyone's unique role and they bring them all together and they help everyone on the team again, that child and family team that I spoke about understand the role of the other providers. So if a family has a therapist and maybe they have a therapist over here at one agency, but then they're working with a psychologist on an IEP or a speech therapist In the school setting, and this kid also has a SSA from the board, all of these people come together on a monthly or bimonthly basis, coordinated by our care coordinator, and they're all communicating.
Kesha Valentine:That's the unique role of the care coordinator it is to get everyone to communicate, everyone to understand what the other one is doing and, again, speaking one common language for the goal of the family. There are times when our care coordinators do do some tasks that may seem very similar to case managers, and I say that because a lot of times when our families come in, they may not have a team wrapped around them, right. So our care coordinators do that footwork for them. They do look at the overall picture, and we have two licensed clinicians, myself being one of them, and Chelsea Hams is another one. We're both in a supervisory role, so we also come in with a different, different eye, a different view, and our other supervisors as well. We come in and we help them find those gaps right, right. So although there aren't we're not therapists and we're not in those roles, we do have the capability of getting a very good vision of what this family may need and how can we help them fill those gaps.
Bill Emahiser:It's amazing, yeah, really great stuff there. I think I could use a care coordinator.
Kesha Valentine:I probably could use one myself.
Bill Emahiser:Right, it would be great to have a care coordinator tell me where I could help, because life is busy, right, and I can only imagine, as somebody who doesn't again doesn't have children with special needs, how challenging it would be to have all of these different providers, not just on the treatment side, but there's schools and there might be, like you said, speech therapists and maybe other health issues and developmental issues, and having that one person that can be an advocate and understand the big picture and get to know the family, because that sounds like, and this sounds like, a relationship business.
Kesha Valentine:Absolutely Right, absolutely.
Bill Emahiser:Where is building that relationship? Well, kesha, it has. You know. Our time is starting to wane here a little bit and I'm just. If somebody were hearing this and they think, okay, I have a child with special needs, I have, you know, we've, we have a Medicaid way. I think my child might qualify for this, or maybe there's a referral source out in the community, maybe there's a teacher that hears this or you know a physician that hears this and they think I think I know a child that could benefit from this program. How would they learn more information about Ohio Rise?
Kesha Valentine:Well, it's very simple, right? They can go to our website, wwwunisonhealthorg, and they can click on the Ohio Rise link. They can make a referral that way. They can gather more information that way, and it's right there on our front page. So soon as you go to unisonhealthorg, it's right there.
Bill Emahiser:Fantastic, excellent. Well, kesha, it has been my privilege and pleasure to chat with you today. The work that you and your team members are doing is truly amazing. I'm thankful for all that you do to make lives better for those you serve. Thank you again for being on the podcast today. I really, really appreciate it. This has been great.
Kesha Valentine:Absolutely.
Bill Emahiser:Thank you, Bill. This podcast has been brought to you by Unison Health. Unison Health is a nonprofit mental health agency dedicated to serving the Northwest Ohio community for the past 50 years.