These services are designed to meet the following objectives:
1. Stabilize the crisis or concern that has put the family/individual at risk
2. Ensure the safety of the individual, family and community by reducing or eliminating potential risk factors (violence, emotional/verbal abuse, drug exposure/usage)
3. Help families develop the skills, competencies and resources they need to handle future crisis/stressful situations more effectively.
Critical elements of the Program design are:
Individual and Family Preservation: Services are targeted to individuals and families at imminent risk of out-of-home placement or where/when less restrictive service measures have failed
Intensity: Primary services offer 3 client contacts per week (more when required/indicated).
Flexibility: At lease one half of all contact must occur within the client’s home. Services frequently occur after hours or at times that best meet the client’s needs.
Strength Based: Services focus on promoting family competence by acknowledging and building upon existing family strengths and resources.
Cultural Sensitivity: Services are provided in a culturally competent manner with understanding and respect for cultural and ethnic diversity.
Responsive: POH workers are available to each consumer by telephone and on call for visits 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Collaboration: A team effort to treatment is necessary to ensure long term success. POH workers maintain ongoing communication with community service providers (DCS, Counselors, Physicians, Teachers, etc.).
Personal Care: POH workers maintain maximum caseloads of 15 in order to ensure their ability to promptly respond to and meet emerging consumer needs.
Accountability: We seek not to enable or encourage dependency upon a service. Individual accountability is a large part of our treatment process. We provide an educational platform that encourages and supports autonomy/growth.
Quality: POH services are both therapeutic and concrete in nature. Ongoing training and quality assurance measures are in place to ensure the competency of all POH staff.
There are specific values and beliefs that The Next Step Behavioral Health views as our foundation for success for our POH providers. It is critical that both the staff and supervisors have a firm understanding of and commitment to these values and beliefs about families. They include:
* Children have the right to their family
*Safety within the family (and most importantly of the children) is the primary concern
*The family should become the fundamental resource for the nurturing and the growth of children
*Find strength with every family member by supporting them for their efforts to care for one another.
*Families are diverse and have a right to be respected for their special cultural, racial, ethnic, and religious traditions; children can flourish in different types of families
*A crisis should be viewed as an opportunity for change.
*Inappropriate or mishandled interventions can do harm.
*Families who seem hopeless can grow and change.
*All family members are part of our team and should be treated as colleagues
*It is our job to instill hope by having hope.