(1) The secretary shall establish demonstration sites for statewide implementation of a children's system of care. The demonstration sites shall be selected using the following criteria:

(a) The system administrator must be the recipient of funding by the federal center for mental health services for the purpose of developing a system of care for children with emotional and behavioral disorders;

(b) The system administrator must have established a process for ongoing input and coordination from the public health and safety network or networks established in the catchment area of the project; and

(c) The system administrator may be a project site under a Title IV-E waiver.

(2) For the purposes of this section, "children's system of care" means a centralized community care coordination system representing a philosophy about the way services should be delivered to children and their families, using existing resources of various child-serving agencies addressing the problems of children with emotional and behavioral disorders. The agencies represented may include providers of mental health services, drug and alcohol services, services for the developmentally disabled, county juvenile justice and state juvenile rehabilitation, child welfare, and special education.

The goals of the children's system of care are to:

(1) Maintain a multiagency collaborative planning and system management mechanism at the state and local levels through the establishment of an oversight committee at the local level in accordance with the principles and program requirements associated with the federal center for children's mental health services;

(2) Recommend and make necessary financing changes to support individualized and flexible home and community-based services and supports that are child centered, family driven, strength based, and culturally competent;

(3) Support a common screening tool and integrated care coordination system;

(4) Recommend and make necessary changes in contracting to support integrated service delivery;

(5) Promote and increase the expansion of system capacity for children and their families in each demonstration site community;

(6) Develop the capacity of family members to provide support for one another and to strengthen the family voice in system implementation through the utilization of a citizens' advisory board as described in *RCW 74.55.040 and through other outreach activities;

(7) Conduct research and draw on outside consultation to identify best practices to inform system development and refinement; and

(8) Demonstrate cost-effectiveness by creating system efficiencies that generate savings from the current level of expenditures for children being served by the participating agencies. These savings must be used to provide more services to the children involved in the project, or to serve more children.

*Reviser's note: RCW 74.55.040 expired January 1, 2004.

The secretary shall assure collaboration with each demonstration site by child-serving entities operated directly by the department or by departmental contractors. A collaboration contract or memorandum of understanding shall be developed by the demonstration site and the secretary for that purpose.

Funding for children's system of care projects following the expiration of the federal grant shall be determined using the process established in RCW 74.14A.060 and funded children's system of care projects shall be included in the annual report required by that section.