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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | June 21, 2018 10:15 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Michele Brooks and Sen. Christine M. Tartaglione |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | PA Placement Criteria for Drug and Alcohol |
| In the near future we will be introducing a bill that will require the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs to continue its use of the state-developed, state-tailored Pennsylvania Client Placement Criteria (PCPC) that currently governs placement of people seeking addiction treatment in licensed addiction treatment programs through public funding. The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs is proposing to drop Pennsylvania’s state-developed addiction placement criteria and replace it with a national tool that lacks Pennsylvania specificity and is not attuned to the addiction treatment needs of people on Medicaid including: destitute pregnant addicted women, women with dependent children, veterans and low-level drug offenders sent to treatment as part of sentencing by all of our drug courts. The changes in placement criteria proposed by the Department are entirely unnecessary, very expensive and quite disruptive to our prevention and treatment system that is working hard to handle the demands of Pennsylvania’s families caught up in the middle of our state’s worst drug epidemic. The initial cost of implementing this proposal is estimated at $4 million with much of that cost shifted down to the local level. This is an unfunded mandate. Plain and simple. The proposal will require the retraining of 6,000 to 8,000 people who are already trained in and using the Pennsylvania Client Placement Criteria which is state-specific, state-developed and state-tested Our proposed bill will require the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs to continue to use the Pennsylvania Client Placement Criteria, which was established, developed and maintained in direct response to a vote of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. That vote was unanimous (Act 152 of 1988). Let’s stop this unfunded mandate and maintain Pennsylvania’s own state-tailored criteria. Please join us in co-sponsoring this legislation. |
Memo Updated: June 21, 2018 10:16 AM