The Missouri Alliance for Children and Families (MACF) is a Limited Liability Partnership formed in March, 1997 by ten Non-Profit 501(c)3 child serving agencies. The agencies joined together in this collaboration to bid on the Interdepartmental Initiative for Children with Severe Needs contract developed by a consortium of MissouriState human service agencies (Social Services, Mental Health, Health, and Elementary and Secondary Education). The intent of the non-profit agencies was to form a partnership that provided the children and youth with a comprehensive care system utilizing the expertise and resources of each agency. Nine of the ten agencies still serve as owners of MACF. Those nine agencies are:
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Boys and GirlsTown of Missouri a Great Circle Agency
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Butterfield Youth Services
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Cornerstones of Care
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Edgewood Children’s Center a Great Circle Agency
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Every Child’s Hope (formerly Evangelical Children’s Home)
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Missouri Baptist Children Home
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Children's Foundation of Mid America (formerly Presbyterian Children’s Services)
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Provident Inc.
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YouthBridge (formerly General Protestant)
In 1997, MACF was awarded the contract for the Interdepartmental Initiative for Children with Severe Needs and began serving children from the child welfare, juvenile justice, and mental health systems in March of 1999. The initiative was unique in that multiple state child serving agencies collaborated by pooling financial resources to serve a specialized population. All agencies referred children and youth they found challenging to serve to MACF for comprehensive treatment planning and service. The project, which covered 22 counties in central and eastern Missouri, was designed to demonstrate that children with multiple behavioral and mental health problems could be effectively integrated into the community at less overall cost than the state was paying for services in more restrictive settings. These children had behavioral needs ranging from traumatic emotional functioning to severe aggression towards others and themselves. Care Management staff assessed the behavioral needs to implement the appropriate services located within the child’s home community. Services included, but were not limited to items such as intensive therapies, behavior modification, parenting classes, mentoring, educational and vocational services. This contract was re-bid and awarded to MACF in April, 2006 and is now referred to as the Specialized Case Management Contract.
MACF expanded the organizational structure by adding a Foster Care Department in February of 2001. This department specializes in recruitment, training, and licensure of treatment based foster homes that are readily available to serve as step-down placements in assisting children during their transition into the community.
In 2005, MACF was awarded the Foster Care and Adoption Case Management (FCCM) contract in the St. Louis region. MACF and five partner agencies began the venture in September, 2005 as Missouri Alliance Permanency Program (MAPP). MAPP began serving 525 children and youth who were in the custody of the Missouri Children’s Division due to child abuse and neglect, mental health needs or lack of familial support systems. MACF was awarded the contract again in 2008 and increased the number of children and youth served to 630 beginning October 1, 2008. Also in 2008, MACF bid on four FCCM contracts in four separate regions in Missouri [Southwest region (Joplin), Southwest region (Springfield), Central, South Central] and received these awards for a total of 630 clients. Currently, MACF and its partners are serving 1,660 children, youth and their families throughout the state of Missouri.