Accessible Services - Services that are affordable, located nearby, and are open during evenings and weekends. Staff is sensitive to and incorporates individual and cultural values. Staff is also sensitive to barriers that may keep a person from getting help. For example, an adolescent may be more willing to attend a support group meeting in a church or club near home rather than travel to a mental health center. An accessible service can handle consumer demand without placing people on a long waiting list.
Appropriate Services - Designed to meet the specific needs of each individual child and family. For example, one family may need day treatment services while another family may need home based services. Appropriate services for one child or family may not be appropriate for another family. Usually the most appropriate services are in the child's community.
Assessment - A professional review of a child's and family's needs that is done when they first seek services from a caregiver. The assessment of the child includes a review of physical and mental health, intelligence, school performance, family situation, and behavior in the community. The assessment identifies the strengths of the child and family. Together, the caregiver and family decide what kind of treatment and support, if any, they needed.
Caregiver - A person who has special training to help people with mental health problems. Examples of people with the special training are social workers, teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and mentors.
Case Manager - An individual who organizes and coordinates services and supports for children with mental health problems and their families. (Alternative terms: service coordinator, advocate, and facilitator.)
Case Management - A service that helps people arrange appropriate and available services and supports. As needed, a case manager coordinates mental health, social work, education, health, vocational, transportation, advocacy, respite, and recreational services. The case manager makes sure that the child's family's changing needs are met. (This definition does not apply to managed care.)
Child Protective Services - Designed to safeguard the child when there is suspicion of abuse, neglect, or abandonment, or where there is no family to take care of the child. Examples of help delivered in the home include financial assistance, vocational training, homemaker services, and day care. If in-home supports are insufficient, the child may be removed from the home on a temporary or permanent basis. The goal is to keep the child with his or her family whenever possible.
Children and Adolescents at Risk for Mental Health Problems - Children are at higher risk for developing mental health problems when certain factors occur in their lives or environment. Some of these factors are physical abuse, emotional abuse or neglect, harmful stress, discrimination, poverty, loss of a loved one, frequent moving, alcohol, and other drug abuse, trauma, and exposure to violence.
Continuum of Care - A term that implies a progression of services that a child would move through, probably one at a time. The more up-to-date idea is one of comprehensive services. See systems of care and wrap around services.
Coordinated Services - Child-serving organizations, along with the family, talk with each other and agree upon a plan of care that meets the child's needs. These organizations can include mental health, education, juvenile justice, and child welfare. Case management is necessary to coordinate services. Also see family centered services and wrap around services.
Crisis Residential Treatment Services - Short-term, round-the-clock help provided in a non-hospital setting during crisis. For example, when a child becomes aggressive and uncontrollable despite in-home supports, the parent can have the child temporarily placed in a crisis residential treatment service. The purpose of this care is to avoid inpatient hospitalization, to help stabilize the child, and to determine the next appropriate step.
Cultural Competence - Help that is sensitive and responsive to cultural differences. Caregivers are aware of the impact of their own culture and possess skills that help them provide services that are culturally appropriate in responding to people's unique cultural differences, such as race and ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, or physical disability. They adapt their skills to fit a family's values and customs.
Day Treatment - Day treatment includes special education, counseling, parent training, vocational training, skill building, crisis intervention, and recreational therapy. It lasts at least four hours a day. Day treatment programs work with mental heath, recreation, and education organizations and may be provided by them.
Department of Children and Families (DCF) - This state agency is established under the Connecticut General Statutes as an agency serving children (under age 18) and families. Its programs include: child welfare services, a 24 hour hotline, the Office of Foster and Adoption Services (OFAS), child protective and family services, voluntary services, juvenile justice services, mental health services, substance abuse related services, as well as prevention and educational services.
DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition) - An official manual of mental health problems developed by the American Psychiatric Association. This reference book is used by psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, and other health and mental health care providers to understand and diagnose a mental health problem. Insurance companies and health care providers also use the terms and explanations in this book when they discuss mental health problems.
Early Intervention - A process for recognizing warning signs that individuals are at risk for mental health problems and taking early action against factors that out them at risk. Early intervention can help children get better more quickly and prevent problems from becoming worse.
Emergency and Crisis Services - A group of services that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to help during a mental health emergency. When a child is thinking about suicide, there services would save his or her life. Examples: telephone crisis hotlines, crisis counseling, crisis residential treatment services, crisis outreach teams, and crisis respite.
Family-Centered Services - Help designed for the specific needs of each individual child and his or her family. Children and families should not be expected to fit into services that do not meet their needs. See appropriate services, coordinated services, wraparound services, and cultural competence.
Family Support Services - Help designated to keep the family together and to cope with mental health problems that affect them. These services may include consumer information workshops, in-home supports, family therapy, parent training, crisis services, and respite care.
Home-Bases Services - Help provided in a family's home for either a defined time or as long as necessary to deal with mental health problems. Examples include parent training, counseling, and working with family members to identify, find, or provide other help they may need. The goal is to prevent the child from being placed out of the home. (Alternate term is in-home supports)
Independent Living Services - Support for a young person in living on her or her own and in getting a job. These services can include therapeutic group care or supervised apartment living. Services teach youth how to handle financial, medical, housing, transportation, and other daily living needs, as well as how to get along with others.
Individualized Services - Designed to meet the unique needs of each child and family. Services are individualized when the caregivers pay attention to the child's and family's needs and strengths, ages, and stages of development. See appropriate services and family-centered services.
In Home Supports - See Home Based Services.
Inpatient Hospitalization - Mental health treatment in a hospital setting 24 hours a day. The purpose of inpatient hospitalization is: (1) short-term treatment in cases where a child is in crisis and possibly a danger to self or others, and (2) diagnosis and treatment when the patient cannot be evaluated or treated appropriately in an outpatient setting.
Managed Care - A way to supervise the delivery of health care services. Managed care may specify the caregivers that the insured family can see. It may also limit the number of visits and kinds of services that will be covered.
Mental Health - Mental health refers to how a person thinks, feels, and acts when faced with life's situations. It is how people look at themselves, their lives, and the other people in their lives; evaluate the challenges and the problems; and explore choices. This includes handling stress, relating to there people, and making decisions.
Mental Health Problems - Mental health problems are real. These problems affect one's thoughts, body, feelings, and behavior. They can be severe and can seriously interfere with a person's life. They are not just a passing phase. They can cause a person to become disabled. Some of these disorders are known as depression, bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety disorders, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and conduct disorder.
Mental Disorders - Another term for mental health problems (above).
Mental Illnesses - This term is usually used to refer to severe mental health problems in adults.
Plan of Care - A treatment plan designed for each child or family. The caregiver(s) develop(s) the plan with the family. The plan identifies the child's and family's strengths and needs. It establishes goals and details appropriate treatment and services to meet his or her special needs.
Residential Treatment Centers - Facilities that provide treatment 24 hours a day and can usually serve more that 12 young people at a time. Children with severe emotional disturbances receive constant supervision and care. Treatment may include individual, group, and family therapy; behavior therapy; special education; recreation therapy; and medical services. Residential treatment is usually more long-term that inpatient hospitalization. Centers are also known as therapeutic group homes.
Respite Care - A service that provides a break for parents who have child with a serious emotional disturbance. Some parents may need this help every week. It can be provided in the home or in another location. Trained parents or counselors take care of the child for a brief period of time. This gives the families relief from the strain of taking care of a child with a serious emotional disturbance.
Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) - Diagnosable disorders in children and adolescents that severely disrupt daily functioning in the home, school, or community. Some of these disorders are depression, attention deficit/hyperactivity, anxiety, conduct, and eating disorders. Serious emotional disturbances affect 1 in 10 young people.
Service - A type of support or clinical intervention designed to address the specific mental health needs of a child and his or her family. A service could be received once or repeated over a course of time as determined by the child, family, and service provider.
Service Coordinator - See Case Manager.
System of Care - A method of delivering mental health services that helps children and adolescents with mental health problems and their families get the full range of services in or near their homes and communities. These services must be tailored to each individual child's physical, emotional, social, and educational needs. In systems of care, local organizations work in teams to provide these services.
Therapeutic Foster Care - A home where a child with serious emotional disturbances lives with trained foster parents with access to other support services. These foster parents receive special support from organizations that provide crisis intervention, psychiatric, psychological, and social work services. The intended length of care is usually from to 12 months.
Therapeutic Group Homes - Community based, home-like settings that provide intensive treatment services to a small number of young people (usually 5 to 10 persons). These young people work on issues that require 24-hour-a-day supervision. The home should have many connections within an interagency system of care. Psychiatric services offered in this setting try to avoid hospital placement and to help the young person move toward a less restrictive living situation.
Transitional Services - Services that help the children leave the system that provides help for children and move into adulthood and the adult service system. Help includes mental health care, independent living services, supported housing, vocational services, and a range of other support services.
Voluntary Services - Voluntary services is a DCF operated program for children and youth with serious emotional disturbances, mental illnesses and/or substance dependency. This program is only for families who are not abusive or neglectful. Voluntary services emphasizes a community-based approach and attempts to coordinate services from multiple agencies. At the foundation of this program is the requirement that parents and families are involved in the planning and delivery of services to their child or youth. Voluntary services reduces reliance on restrictive forms of treatment and out-of-home placement and ultimately, promotes positive development.
Wraparound Services - A "full-service" approach to developing help that meets the mental health needs of individual children and their families. Children and families may need a range of community support services to fully benefit from traditional mental health services such as family therapy and special education. See appropriate services, coordinated services, family-centered services, and system of care.
Families United for Children's Mental Health
A Federation of Families Chapter in Connecticut
glossary
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