Community-based systems approach to children’s managed mental health services – The increasing implementation of managed care principles in the organization and financing of mental health services has now entered the area of children’s mental health services, especially as states seek to control the increasing costs of Medicaid programs. Managed care approaches are relatively new in mental health and those that exist have been developed with adult and private sector populations in mind. If applied to child mental health services, the usual benefits restriction approach in traditional behavioral managed care has the potential of depriving children of timely and effective intervention and prevention services.