The purpose of this project is to facilitate enrollment in Medicaid/CHIP of youth discharged from the Juvenile Justice Administration (JJA) in Kansas and to evaluate the project on behalf of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Professionally trained Parent Mentors, who are employees of Keys for Networking, will be used to assist in the enrollment process. AIR will be conducting the evaluation of this program. The evaluation will look at the successes/failures of this effort and assess the program’s feasibility in other areas in the United States.

Keys for Networking and AIR will are doing outreach to caregivers of youth discharged from the JJA and/or returned to their home to increase and retain enrollment in CHIP or Medicaid. They will reach an estimate of 1,500 teenagers released from custody and divide them into control and experimental groups. The control and experimental groups will have access to the same resources and websites for enrolling, but the experimental group will also have access to a Parent Mentor (there has been no research to show that the Parent Mentors provide an advantage to enrolling teenagers in Medicaid/CHIP).