Personal, Family, And Service Use Characteristics Of Young People Served By An Interagency Community-Based System Of Care

Abstract

In order to create a more functional system of care, agency administrators, direct service providers, the young people served, their parents, and advocates worked together to assess local needs and existing service features, and to plan required changes. This article presents data on some personal and family characteristics and patterns of service utilization of the young people served in this system of care. These data include the child's age, gender, race or ethnicity, learning characteristics, psychiatric status, and adjudications; parent marital status and employment, living arrangements for the child, and family history of risk factors; and the child's history of services and placements. Some relationships within the present data and between the present data and those of other system-of-care descriptions are discussed.

Characteristics of Children and Adolescents with Serious Emotional Disturbance in Systems of Care. Part II

“…A majority of the children provided with community-based services were boys, a common finding in communitybased programs (e.g., Barber et al, 1992;Epstein et al, 1994Epstein et al, , 1995, as well as in the National Longitudinal Transition study of students with SED (Valdes, Williamson, & Wagner, 1990) and the National Adolescent and Child Treatment Study (Silver et al, 1992). In the present study, boys with SED outnumbered girls with SED by 4:1.…”

“…It has been suggested that many students with serious emotional disturbance (SED) who have not been identified may not be receiving appropriate services through various systems of care, such as mental health, social services, child welfare, and juvenile justice (Knitzer, 1993;Mclntyre, 1993). Recent studies indicate that some students with SED who are unidentified by the school system are referred for mental health (Singh et al, 1994) or community-based services (Epstein et al, 1994;Epstein, Cullinan, Quinn, & Cumblad, 1995); however, it is unlikely that all those who need services are indeed referred to systems of care or actually receive the services to which they are entitled.…”

“…Singh et al (1994) analyzed the characteristics of children and adolescents with SED who received mental health services in partial hospitalization and inpatient settings. Epstein et al (1994Epstein et al ( , 1995 described the characteristics of children with emotional and behavioral disorders who received services in communitybased programs designed to prevent placement in residential programs.…”

“…Thus, each locality decided to which children and adolescents they were going to provide services within their own community. Like communitybased services provided in other places, such as Ventura, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Riverside counties in California and DuPage county in Illinois (Epstein et al, 1995;Jordan & Hernandez, 1990;, risk status (i.e., being at risk of, or relocation from, out-of-home placement) was used by these localities as the criteria for services eligibility. Although a core group of services (e.g., home-based services) was provided by all localities, the mix of services offered differed considerably across localities.…”

Clinical and Non-Clinical Characteristics Associated with Medication Use Among Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance

“…There is however, a lack of documented studies investigating the use of psychotropic medication with children and adolescents (Lyons 2000). Specifically, there is limited knowledge concerning the dosage, risks, benefits, and tolerability of psychotropic medications used among this population (Epstein and Cullinan 1995).…”