The Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) is announcing October training dates for the Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) assessment tool. Ohio Medicaid is in the process of rolling out a new program, OhioRISE (Resilience through Integrated Systems and Excellence), a specialized managed care program for youth with complex behavioral health and multi-system needs. With leadership from Governor Mike DeWine’s Children’s Initiative, the ODM in partnership with state child-serving agencies and the Praed Foundation created an Ohio-specific Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths (CANS) tool and Decision Support Model that all Ohio CANS assessors will be expected to utilize.
CANS is a support tool in the clinical decision-making process to determine eligibility into OhioRISE, level of care, and service planning. The Ohio CANS assessment tool has been developed for broad application across multiple systems, including youth involved in child protection, developmental disability, department of youth services, and mental health and addiction. This ensures youth only need to go through one assessment across multiple providers. The tool gathers all dimensions of the youth and family story to determine needs and strengths and integrates multiple storytellers capturing the voice of the youth and family to produce a full consensus-based assessment. CANS is updated routinely over the course of treatment to continue ongoing care planning.
For individuals that have not been trained to administer CANS, a Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management (TCOM) and Ohio Children’s Initiative CANS Comprehensive training will be required for certification to conduct CANS assessments. If you are due for recertification, you will need to take the full certification (TCOM and CANS) on the new model upon your recertification date. Please note, the TCOM and Ohio Children’s Initiative CANS Comprehensive trainings need to be taken sequentially TCOM and CANS Comprehensive and within the same month.
For individuals that have previously been trained to administer CANS and possess an active CANS certification, a 2.5-hour virtual booster training has been developed by the Praed Foundation to provide guidance on the model that has been updated to be specific to Ohio and the OhioRISE program. All actively certified CANS assessors are required to take the booster training on the new model so there is standardization of the tool until all assessors are fully trained.
The October training dates, a helpful FAQ, how to create an account and register, and an enrollment guide can be viewed online. Additional training dates will be announced each month. The state is covering the cost of the training.