Proceed with caution.
It’s good advice for my son with the learner’s permit as well reacting to Monday’s rollout of new state technology.
Gov. JB Pritzker, joined with lawmakers and Google Public Sector executives at the tech giant’s Chicago office, according to Capitol News Illinois, announcing plans for a summer launch of BEACON, a “centralized portal for children’s mental health care.”
At first blush, the platform promises a significant positive impact. Parents seeking mental health services for children should be able to access all the relevant resources at one location. The hub actually is a two-way street, as parents can upload documents one time to one place and avoid repetition (like proving residency for the K-8 and the 9-12 district, or supplying a birth certificate for soccer and Little League).
Also promising is the idea of health care providers and schools having access so they can recommend available services. Privacy concerns are understandable, but as a parent who started navigating these waters circa 2008, when the state, schools and doctors were far less technologically advanced, it would’ve been much less stressful to feel like everyone was pulling in the same direction with a shared understanding of tools in the box.
“Families that previously had to navigate multiple paths telling the story of their youth’s challenges dozens of times in the hope that a door to services would open now will have an option for a single centralized place to go for help,” said Dana Weiner, lead author of the 2023 Blueprint for Transformation.
The governor’s Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative commissioned that report, and BEACON seems a key component of reaching its five main goals: adjusting service capacity, streamlining service delivery, earlier interventions, increased accountability and transparency and developing agility to increase responsiveness.
So why the caution? Because for now, it’s all talk. Officials are justifiably optimistic, but so was the Secretary of State’s Office when it rolled out a new online appointment system in September only to announce several reforms in mid-January. Or consider the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, working with a “master contract” vendor to upgrade its 1990s online systems only to learn that vendor couldn’t actually meet demands.
Hopefully things will be different for Google and the Department of Human Services, but a wait-and-see approach seems appropriate.
“If you’ve lived it, like many of us have, you know that nothing about the mental health care system is easy to navigate,” said state Rep. Lindsey LaPointe, D-Chicago. “Things have gotten a whole lot better. We still have lots of hill to climb when it comes to children’s behavioral health access.”
If BEACON works, it counts as real progress. Here’s hoping – cautiously – that initial optimism yields tangible success.
• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Media. Follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.
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February 1, 2024 at 04:53AM
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