Advocates are celebrating an agreement that will provide intensive home- and community-based mental health services for California children in foster care or at risk of removal from their families. The agreement in the class-action suit Katie A. v. Bonta comes nine years after the case was first filed. On September 27, attorneys for the class will ask Judge A. Howard Matz to give preliminary approval of the agreement. Final settlement approval is expected in December.

Under the ground-breaking settlement, California will make two types of mental health services, "Intensive Home-Based Services" and "Intensive Care Coordination," available to certain children under Medicaid. The state will also determine what parts of "Therapeutic Foster Care" services are covered under Medicaid and provide that service to certain class members.  The settlement also requires California to take a number of steps to ensure that children who need the covered services will receive them. For example, under the proposed settlement the state will:

*   instruct providers on delivering therapeutic foster care as a Medicaid service;
*   convene an interagency task force to advance keeping children with mental health issues with their families; and
*   create a system to identify children in need of the covered mental health services and to link them with those services.

The children in the plaintiff class are represented by the Western Center on Law and Poverty, the National Center for Youth Law, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Disability Rights California, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, and the National Health Law Program.