Specifications include, but are not limited to: he MA Department of Public Health (DPH), Bureau of Family Health and Nutrition (BFHN), is seeking a family-serving organization to direct parent-to-parent services and to facilitate family engagement efforts for BFHN programs and initiatives. BFHN’s goal is to leverage the lived experience of families and caregivers of all children, including children and youth with special health needs, to support the system of care to engage them in meeting their needs in the ways they deem most meaningful. The federal Title V Maternal and Child Health Bureau defines family engagement as "the intentional practice of working with families for the ultimate goal of positive outcomes in all areas through the life course. Family engagement reflects a belief in the value of family leadership at all levels: from an individual to community to policy." As described in the Massachusetts Family Engagement Framework, organizations must strive to achieve and sustain a strong, long-term, and meaningful systemic culture of engagement and collaboration with a primary and on-going focus on respectful engagement of families that grows and evolves with their needs. While this procurement involves various programs within the BFHN, most of the scope pertains to the Division for Children & Youth with Special Health Needs (DCYSHN), which is home to the state Title V CYSHN Program. DCYSHN seeks to achieve the Title V six core indicators of a well-functioning system of services for CYSHN and their families. One of the core indicators focuses on family partnership: “Families of CYSHCN are partners in decision-making at all levels of care, from direct care to the organizations that serve them”. This procurement supports the BFHN Title V Program priority to "Engage families, fathers and youth with diverse life experiences through shared power and leadership to improve maternal, child, and family health services." DCYSHN embraces this priority as a core value. Facilitation of family engagement supports BFHN’s efforts to address health inequities through outreach to diverse populations and communities: racial, cultural and linguistic, geographic, condition-specific, and/or age-related. This procurement contains two main components: Component One: Development, management, and oversight of parent-to-parent services (Approximately $250,000 in FY25) The vendor will direct a Parent-to-Parent (P2P) program with services that provide and coordinate non-clinical emotional and practical supports to families to enhance quality-of-life outcomes for their children. This will be done by matching and connecting families with volunteer mentor families; supporting mentor families; providing information and referral; and providing training and developing materials for families. Vendor staff will leverage their lived experience to provide general information and referral to caregivers of CYSHN. In addition, they will manage a parent-to-parent network of volunteer parents of CYSHN to provide more specialized coaching and information to caregivers related to their shared life experiences identified by special health needs and disabilities, situation, and region . They will identify, train, support and guide volunteer mentor families and match them with families searching for support. P2P mentor volunteers will provide non-clinical emotional and practical support to families of CYSHN seeking help. Examples of emotional support may include families realizing they are not alone in their parenting experience, as well as having a trained volunteer parent listen carefully, understanding their concerns, and reflecting on their own personal experiences. Examples of practical support may include volunteers sharing information and resources, providing problem solving tips, coaching through difficult situation related to CYSHN care, providing cultural and linguistic specific supports, and sharing networking opportunities. The volunteers should receive training and coaching to respect confidentiality, cultural and individual differences. Vendor staff will also offer training that can help families manage the multiple and complex elements of their children’s care. Training topics will be determined in collaboration with DPH, but it is anticipated will include topics such as person-centered planning using the Charting the LifeCourse ( CtLC ) framework, organizing their child’s records, emergency preparedness, and transitions. Vendor staff will be expected to use the Charting the LifeCourse (CtLC) framework and tools, as appropriate, to help guide conversations when planning, problem solving or working on goals with family members (for example, when discussing transitions across the lifespan and general person-centered planning). This best practice is in alignment with the Commonwealth’s movement to use CtLC as a common language for all families across the state. The vendor will recruit and support staff and families to participate in occasional DPH-hosted activities such as family surveys, focus groups, advisory and leadership opportunities. All staff must be parents of children and youth with special health needs and/or disabilities and employees of the vendor agency. Membership and participation in P arent to P arent USA, a technical assistance network for state P2P programs, is a requirement of this contract. DPH is seeking innovative approaches for Component One that focus on leveraging the lived experience of caregivers in meaningful ways through parent-to-parent (P2P) services. Component Two: Facilitation of BFHN family engagement efforts (Up to approximately $608,705 in FY25) The vendor will partner with BFHN to facilitate Title V family engagement activities, ensuring that the family perspective is an integral part of all programs and initiatives. Component Two will largely be directed by DPH. Specific activities include: Provide financial support necessary for families to participate in meaningful family engagement activities and manage and distribute family support funds. Provide a mechanism to reimburse families who serve in an advisory capacity to BFHN or participate in related family engagement activities (e.g. focus groups, advisory councils, training registrations), as directed and approved by DPH Ensure access to and payment of family support funds to families served by DCYSHN as directed and approved by DPH Care Coordination Ensure timely payment of invoices for ancillary expense related to family engagement activities, as directed and approved by DPH Ensure timely payment of invoices for stipends, travel expenses and other approved reimbursements submitted by families or on their behalf through BFHN programs Assist families with travel and other arrangements as needed to facilitate their participation in leadership activities Provide Family Specialists with lived experience to support DPH Division for Children and Youth with Special Health Needs (DCYSHN) programs Hire, supervise and support family specialists with lived experience for DCYSHN programs including the Pediatric Palliative Care Network (PPCN) and Universal Newborn Hearing Screening Program (UNHS), and others as needed and funding allows. Provide training and technical assistance on family engagement and support to pediatric care coordination teams as part of the DCYSHN Care Coordination Assistance, Training, Education and Resource (CCATER) Center. (Approximately $120,000 in FY25) The new CCATER Center offers enhanced care coordination training & technical assistance (TA) to MassHealth CARES for Kids provider teams by engaging learners on the delivery of high quality, socially determined, racially equitable, family-engaged, health care coordination services for children with medical complexity and their families. The vendor will hire, supervise and support Family Engagement Training & Technical Assistance (T/TA) Specialists who will be part of the CCATER Team and will work most closely with CARES for Kids family support specialists in participating pediatric practices to provide mentorship and peer support. The primary responsibility of the Family Engagement T/TA Specialists is to provide T/TA to pediatric family support specialists and care coordination teams to teach them how to engage families of children with medical complexity in ways that promote their quality of life and well-being. Activities include but are not limited to: modeling family engagement during curriculum/training sessions and technical assistance encounters delivering individual 1:1 coaching facilitating peer-to-peer family support specialist groups participating in learning collaboratives and communities-of-practice conducting in-person site visits sharing resources and tools that can be adapted by providers for their respective programs/sites reporting on family support needs and experiences to the CCATER Curriculum Development team and to the Data/Quality Improvement Specialist While the current focus of the CCATER Center is the MassHealth CARES for Kids program, CCATER’s reach may expand as new funding or other population needs arise.
