Overview

The State Interagency Council for Services and Supports to Children and Transition-age Youth (SIAC) is a group consisting of state agency representatives, a youth, a parent of a child or transition-age youth with a behavioral health need, and a member of a nonprofit family organization.

SIAC oversees coordinated policy development, comprehensive planning, and collaborative budgeting for services and supports to children and transition-age youth with or at risk of developing behavioral health needs and their families. SIAC strives to design and implement a system of care that is youth- and family-driven, community-based, culturally- and linguistically-responsive, trauma-informed, and recovery-oriented. SIAC conducts monthly meetings that are open to the public.

Regional Interagency Councils (RIACs) operate as the locus of accountability for the system of care, providing a structure for coordination, planning and collaboration of services and supports at the local level to children, adolescents, and transition-age youth and their families, to help them function better at home, in school, in the community and throughout life.

There are 18 RIACs across the commonwealth. Each council is composed of members representing the following: Regional Community Mental Health Centers; Administrative Office of the Courts; Department for Community Based Services; Division of Family Resource and Youth Services Centers (FRYSC); Office of Vocational Rehabilitation; Kentucky Education Cooperatives/Special Education Services; Department for Juvenile Justice; local health departments; a parent of a child with a behavioral health need who is or has been a consumer of system of care services and supports; and one transition-age youth who has a behavioral health disorder who is receiving or has received a service to address mental health, substance use, or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorder. Collaboration is encouraged with any other local public or private agency that provides services and supports to children and transition-age youth with behavioral health needs.

Social and Emotional Health Task Force

In October 2017, SIAC members/designees unanimously voted to establish a Social and Emotional Health Task Force. Comprising representatives of all SIAC member agencies and other stakeholders, this task force was charged to meet for one year with the assigned task of presenting policy, process, and practice recommendations to SIAC to ensure greater alignment, integration, and collaboration among our agencies to improve the social and emotional health and well-being of our children, youth, and young adults.

See Related Links for the Task Force's Recommendations for an Action Agenda.