Children's Mental Health Services
1. Crisis/Emergency Services
Crisis/emergency services are immediate and unscheduled services to deal with a mental health emergency of a current mental health client or non-client. They are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week and include assessment/evaluations, treatment intervention, and referral to other resources. . A child/family may be evaluated by phone, in person, at the clinic/hospital, or by outreach in the community.
2. Outpatient Treatment
Outpatient treatment includes mental health evaluation, psychological testing, individual/group/family counseling; medication management, and consultation and education to community agencies on matters relating to children’s mental health.
3. Case Management
Case management services help children with mental health issues and their families to get different services they need and are willing to accept. It includes care coordination, outreach, interagency collaboration, monitoring and tracking service utilization, and advocating for child and family rights.
4. Family Support Services
Family support services help support the family in providing day-to-day care for their child with mental health issues. They include respite care, in-home behavioral management planning, child mentoring, and parent-to-parent support.
- “Respite care” provides temporary and periodic relief for caregivers from the daily care of a child with mental health issues.
- “In-home behavioral management planning” helps caregivers to consult with an expert in child behavioral management so they learn ways to reinforce child’s positive behaviors or modify negative ones.
- “Child mentoring” is a process by which a child with mental health issues has a structured peer process that supports their positive socialization and decreases alienation due to the child’s mental health issues.
- “Parent-to-parent support” provides peer support for parents with child needing mental health services.
Day treatment services are specialized skills development day services for children with mental health issues. They may be full day treatment at 6 hours or more a day, or partial day treatment at a minimum of 2 hours a day. Day treatment can be provided in a clinic, home, or school setting. Skills development includes leisure skills, social/skills, educational and employment skills, and life skills.
6. Residential Treatment
Residential treatment offers a range of treatment, skill development, and case management services in an alternative living environment to prepare children/youth to function successfully in their home and school situations. This alternative living environment may include therapeutic foster care or therapeutic group care.
7. Inpatient Care and Services
- Inpatient care is the overnight care of a patient with psychiatric disorders in a hospital accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations. Inpatient care includes: (a) adequate pre-placement-screening of potential patients to ensure that services are the least restrictive and the treatment setting is the most appropriate; (b) utilization review to demonstrate that inpatient care is the most efficient and effective level of care currently required; and (c) acute care activities including diagnostic assessment, treatment, and discharge plan which addresses the medical, therapeutic, nutritional, hygiene, occupational, recreational, and psychosocial needs of each acute care patient.
8. Children's Mental Health
DSAMH is pleased to release the Project RECONNECT Program Manual. This publication presents Utah’s initiative to develop and implement transition programming for adolescents with mental and emotional difficulties as they enter adulthood. Utah was selected as one of five sites to receive funding for the Partnerships for Youth Transition initiatives from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Click here to view and download the manual.
Click here for a copy of SAMHSA’s Partnership for Youth Transition Briefing Paper which highlights Utah’s Project RECONNECT.
