Connecting the Systems Around Children and Families

Children and families often interact with more than one community system at a time. A student struggling with attendance may also be facing behavioral health needs, transportation challenges, family stressors, academic concerns, or other barriers.

When schools, courts, providers, families, and community organizations are able to work together, there is a greater opportunity to identify those needs earlier and connect families with appropriate support.

Two efforts underway in Houston County reflect that approach: Truancy to Triumph and a proposed ECINS shared-care coordination pilot.

Truancy to Triumph: A System of Care, Not Another Program

Truancy to Triumph, or T2T, was developed by Mental Health Matters using CHINS funding to strengthen Houston County’s early-intervention response for youth at risk of deeper court involvement.

Spearheaded by Judge Monica Wilburn and her team, this pre-petition diversion model brings schools, courts, families, and service providers together to look beyond an attendance problem and identify the underlying needs that may be contributing to truancy or chronic absenteeism.

The goals are straightforward:

• Re-engage students in school

• Address barriers early

• Connect families to the right services

• Reduce unnecessary court involvement

For a student referred by the school, that means looking at what may be happening beneath the attendance issue, including family stressors, behavioral health needs, transportation, academics, engagement, and other barriers.

Rather than waiting for those challenges to escalate, the goal is to build an individualized response earlier.

Houston County Attendance Summit

This work will also be part of the conversation at the Houston County Attendance Summit on September 18, 2026. Chief Judge Katherine Lumsden will speak about HB 123 and why addressing truancy and chronic absenteeism matters for students, families, and the long-term health and safety of the community.

Connecting High-Need Families Through ECINS

Mental Health Matters has also entered a pilot proposal with ECINS, Empowering Communities with Integrated Network Systems, to explore a shared-care coordination approach for high-risk, high-need families who interact with multiple community systems.

One of the challenges in community care is not always a lack of services. Sometimes, it is that one system may not know what another system is already doing.

A school may see one part of a family’s situation. A court may see another. A healthcare or behavioral-health provider may have another piece of the picture.

ECINS is working with Mental Health Matters to design workflows that could help authorized partners coordinate around appropriate cases, identify needs earlier, and connect families with medical, educational, community-supervision, behavioral-health, and other resources.

The goal is wraparound coordination:

Fewer silos. Less duplication. Clearer accountability. Earlier intervention.

ECINS has offered to build the initial pilot workflows at no cost so the community can test the approach and determine whether it improves coordination in practice.

Moving the Work Forward

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Truancy to Triumph and the proposed ECINS pilot are different efforts, but they share an important goal: helping community systems work together more effectively around the children and families they serve.

Better coordination can help identify barriers sooner, create clearer pathways to available resources, and give families a stronger opportunity to remain connected to community-based support before challenges deepen.

Earlier intervention. Better coordination. Stronger support.