Access to Care

Promoting access to mental health and behavioral health services for children and youth most at risk.

Children with Intensive Needs

Accessing Services—Children with Intensive Needs
The Collaboration Council partners with agencies that deliver youth and family-driven culturally competent services and support for youth with behavioral health challenges to promote success in school, strengthen bonds in the family, and develop ways of coping and overcoming emotional and behavioral problems.

Pathway to Services helps children and their families connect with community-based services and support in Montgomery County. Pathways works with families with Medical Assistance, private insurance, or no insurance.

Local Care Team (LCT): The LCT is the next stop in the system of care for many families. Along with consistent family-voice representation, this interagency team of public, child-serving agencies determines how to best use local resources to keep the family intact and increase both adult and child/youth family members’ functioning. The LCT is the pathway to wraparound services in the community. It also reviews cases of children and youth who are eligible to be placed in high-cost residential programs, either in Maryland or out-of-state.

Wraparound care: This is a strengths-based, family-driven process that puts in place an array of services and informal supports to help strengthen families and address emotional and behavioral concerns within the community. The name Wraparound reflects the way each family is wrapped in support with the help of a Care Coordinator.

Supporting successful outcomes:

• In FY22, Pathways to Services received 776 calls. Of those, 184 calls were referrals to the Local Care Team (LCT).
• There were a total of 108 LCT meetings and 35 youth were connected to JSSA’s wraparound services.
• In FY22, a total of 62 youth were served by JSSA’s wraparound services.

Healthy Families Montgomery (HFM)

HFM is a voluntary home visiting service for first-time parents in Montgomery County. Participants are screened for multiple stressors such as mental health/substance use concerns, limited self-sufficiency, and the experience of abuse or neglect as a child. Home visits begin with a weekly schedule for a minimum of six months postpartum and are modified as the family gains confidence and meet their goals. Families receive services for three years, and emphasis is placed on health care, child development, parenting education and support, and family self-sufficiency.

HFM by the Numbers – FY22:

• 93 assessments conducted
• 89 families served
• 30 first-time mothers enrolled in the program
• 1,045 home visits conducted
• There were no indicated cases of child abuse/neglect for FY22
• 100% of mothers who delivered in FY22 completed postpartum care; no repeat births to teen mothers