Health & Mental Health
Due to their age and developmental stages, children have unique health and mental health needs that are different from adults and must be treated differently. In addition, preventive care is especially important for ensuring children grow up to be healthy adults. Low-income children in New York State typically receive health and mental health care coverage through Medicaid, in plans referred to as Child Health Plus and Family Health Plus.
CCC’s Work In Children’s Health and Mental Health
Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York is committed to ensuring every child has access to timely, high-quality health and mental health services.
CCC advocates to:
Ensure all children have access to high quality health services:
- We support universal health care for all children.
- We advocate to ensure federal health care reform and New York State Medicaid Redesign address the unique health needs of children.
- We support funding for New York City’s child health clinics.
Ensure all children have access to quality mental health services:
- We advocate to ensure New York State’s Medicaid Redesign, including the development of Behavioral Health Organizations (BHOs), streamline mental health services and meet the unique mental health needs of children.
- We advocate for the expansion of school-based health and mental health services.
- We promote initiatives that increase awareness of and access to Early Intervention (EI) services for children ages 0-3 with developmental delays.
- We support increasing the number of mental health treatment slots for children in New York City, to eliminate waiting lists and better meet the needs of children in need.
Current and recent issues:
- We fought to expand children’s access to behavioral health services.
- We support the First 1,000 Days initiative aimed at improving outcomes for young children.
- We support the Early Intervention program and advocate for expanded resources to be dedicated to the program.
- We are advocating for more attention to be paid to racial disparities in maternal mortality rates in NYC and for more resources to address the issue.
- We are raising awareness of the long-term trauma of family separation on migrant children.
