Ineffective Therapy Program Could Not Be Justified
By Dorian Dodson
CYFD Secretary
Let me set the record straight about statements— many inaccurate statements— made about the Family Functional Therapy (FFT) program in the April 14 Journal.
The Children Youth and Families Department is not shutting down the FFT program. We are transferring it back into the provider community where it belongs. This was my decision, and I stand by it.
The FFT program has been in existence for over three years and, as of January, had a survival rate (statistician talk for success rate) of only 28 percent. One could argue that doing nothing would have produced at least equal results.
While the provider communities elsewhere and in New Mexico have had a much higher success rate, our program, even after all this time, did not.
After three years, the average caseload of FFT workers is between five and six clients while the best practice model calls for a caseload of 10 to 12 clients.
It is not true, as was stated by Donna Elliot, that the FFT staff did not get referrals. Ask any juvenile probation and parole officer or protective services worker who tried to get their clients into the program. There simply was great and chronic resistance to taking these referrals.
Add to that the fact that CYFD had to pay an annual contract fee to Family Functional Therapy LLC, an out-of-state corporation, of $120,000. Among the services provided for this fee was clinical supervision of the FFT staff. So, despite the fact that there is a highly credentialed program manager with a salary of $69,000, he could not clinically supervise his own staff. We had to pay someone in Seattle to supervise our people. On top of that, there were eight regional managers of the program for a total staff of 39. That's a ratio of one supervisor to two to five staff.
Ms. Elliot, a paid consultant on contract with CYFD, was responsible for making the initial financial projections of this program. She estimated that the program would earn over $1.2 million a year in Medicaid revenues. At its highest point, it never earned more than $332,000 a year.
CYFD financial managers had consistently warned that her projections were unrealistic and too high, and cautioned CYFD and the Legislature about counting on these revenues to sustain the program.
There were no battles among Cabinet secretaries. There were internal discussions that CYFD should not and could not be reimbursed by a fellow agency (Human Services Department that manages Medicaid) at a much higher level than providers in the community. Secretary Pam Hyde has been supportive but realistic.
CYFD takes all of this very seriously and is looking at all of its programs to be sure they are pulling their weight and providing the best value for taxpayers' money. It's my responsibility as a Cabinet secretary to be sure that we are effectively utilizing existing resources before I ask for more.
Could the program have been more successful after a decade or so? Possibly. But we need the help right now in our juvenile justice and protective services offices. Three years with no improvement, a low success rate, a high contract fee, $543,000 in managerial fees alone and badly overestimated revenue made this the only right decision.
No FFT person lost his or her job. A couple of them will lose supervisory differential pay, because we don't need so many supervisors. None of them has to move. They will continue to do clinical work. They will just do a lot more of it. And FFT will continue in the provider community.
So I pulled the plug on an ineffective program.
Ms. Elliot's speculation on what happened, and why, are as inaccurate as her financial forecasting.
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