Family Services
Family Services include an array of treatment services available to children, adolescents, and families that support their needs in the home, school, and community. These services ensure quality, family-driven and youth-centered treatment is provided to CBH members
To learn more, please contact CBH_CCBS.Team@phila.gov
Who Qualifies for These Services?
Community-based services are available to children and adolescents under the age of 21 who have a DSM-5 diagnosis and meet medical necessity criteria (MNC). Each service is expected to provide individualized treatment and/or care coordination in a familial/natural environment and is provided to the member across all settings (school, home, and community).
Levels of Care
Through different levels of care, members can receive comprehensive, evidence-based, and informed treatment that will sustain community tenure, advance emotional, physical, and cognitive development, and strengthen the family system within its natural environment.
Family Based Mental Health Services
Family-Based Services (FBS) is an 8-month, comprehensive family therapy treatment designed for children under 21. It is considered the most intensive in-home family service in the CBH Children’s Continuum of Services.
FBS strives to promote in-home, community-based treatment so families can address challenging child/adolescent behaviors and patterns of interaction in the home, reducing reliance on out-of-home placements such as residential treatment or foster care. In addition to supporting parents/caregivers, extended families, and other significant persons during the treatment process, FBS treatment seeks to help youth maintain community tenure by building further natural supports.
FBS integrates mental health treatment, family support, and case management. Parents and caregivers are considered part of the treatment team. FBS is provided at least one session per week but should increase in frequency and intensity whenever clinically indicated. For crisis planning and support, FBS teams are available 24 hours daily, 7 days weekly. FBS also provides assessments, aftercare planning, multisystem service linkage, and referrals.
Functional Family Therapy
Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is Intensive Behavioral Health Services (IBHS), formerly Behavioral Health Rehabilitation Services (BHRS). This national blueprint is an evidence-based intervention for youth and their families.
FFT is delivered over 3-5 months and is appropriate for youth ages 11-18. It is designed to help youth who may have acting-out behavioral challenges and a broad range of externalizing behaviors that encompass school problems, drug use and abuse, violence, delinquency, and oppositional defiant behaviors.
FFT aims to improve family communication, problem-solving, and supportiveness while decreasing the negativity and hopelessness embedded in troubled families. FFT has been proven appropriate for youth with conduct and delinquency challenges. It is often utilized as a resource by Probation and Family Court. However, it is worth noting that FFT can be used with all at-risk youth and should be considered as a treatment option from other referral sources as well (i.e., AIP, APHP, PRTF, Outpatient).
Multi-systemic Therapy for Problem Sexual Behavior, Risky Sexual Behavior, and Traditional
Multi-systemic Therapy for Problem Sexual Behavior (MST-PSB) is Intensive Behavioral Health Services (IBHS), formerly Behavioral Health Rehabilitation Services (BHRS), is an adaptation of the evidence-based treatment model Multisystemic Therapy (MST) that is specifically targeted to adolescents who have engaged in problematic sexual behavior (PSB) that results in the victimization of another individual.
*Note: CBH also authorizes traditional MST, which does not include the PSB component.
Both traditional and PSB are appropriate for youth ages 11-17. MST-PSB is an intensive, community-based intervention that is strengths-based and present-focused. It engages the youth’s entire ecosystem in assessment, planning, and intervention.
This level of care often includes 2-3 (and sometimes more) therapy sessions per week that address the multiple systemic factors associated with youth who commit sexually abusive offenses, including individual, family, peer, community, and school factors. Family treatment is delivered over 5-7 months and focuses on maintaining the youth’s safety in the community, identifying and addressing drivers to PSB, and other referring behaviors.
MST-PSB relies heavily on family therapy as a mechanism of change for the youth and family and draws on models of parent training, Structural and Strategic Family Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and social skills building. Treatment must include a parent or caregiver who is willing to participate in family therapy to enforce the safety plan and who acknowledges that the youth has engaged in problem sexual behavior.
