The Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative’s Specialized Community Services

Supports children & families
Responds to cultural needs
Expands resources
Involves schools
Stabilizes communities

The Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative effectively wraps comprehensive community supports around the family unit so they can best support the child. The Initiative’s mission is to strengthen, expand, and integrate Massachusetts state services into a comprehensive, community-based system of care. This will ensure that families and their children with significant behavioral, emotional, mental and clinical health needs obtain the services necessary for success. Wraparound is not a service but a process used to create, put in place, and monitor an individual plan that is created specifically to address the needs of a youth and builds on the strengths of the youth, family, team, and community.

Culturally Responsive services are responsive to the family’s values, beliefs, norms, and to the socio-economic and cultural context. Offered to both Springfield and Holyoke’s minority populations, the staff is both bicultural and bilingual. The program actively engages Hispanic youth and families seeking Intensive Care Coordination (ICC) services and Caregiver Peer to Peer Support. Together they develop an individual care plan (ICP) that guides the family and team in pursing goals identified by the care planning team

Child-Centered and Family Driven services are driven by the needs and preferences of the child and family, developed in partnership with families and accountable to families. A care planning team of the family’s preference will be assembled and made up of formal (e.g. teachers, state agency workers, etc) and natural supports (e.g. friends, neighbors, etc) to help support the youth and family. With the help of a Family Partner, the parent/caregiver is taught how to navigate the child-serving systems, identify and connect with support and community, as well as reach goals identified in the ICP.

Strengths and Community Based services are built on the strengths of the family and their community and based on a comprehensive home-based assessment of their current situation. In collaboration with other Community Service Agencies in the area, a local Systems of Care Committee will support efforts to create and sustain collaborative partnerships among families, parent/family organizations, traditional and non-traditional service providers, community organizations, state agencies, faith-based groups, local schools and other stakeholders.