What We Believe

In following its mission, the Children's Mental Health Program has adopted these principles to guide the system of care:

Services and Supports Should be Comprehensive & Community Based: Children belong in their home and communities. A broad array of services and supports should be available and responsive to the biological, neurological, psychological, and social aspects of children' mental health and supportive of the multiple areas of functioning in a child's life.

Family Partnerships and Supports: Families, substitute families, and other primary caregivers are respected partners in all aspects of the system, from treatment planning and service delivery to policymaking, system development, evaluation and management. Families should be provided with reasonable and meaningful services and supports for their children.

Respectful: Services should be responsive to family needs, cultural differences and special issues. Services and supports should be equitable and responsive to the cultural and linguistic characteristics of children and families.

Integrated: Interagency planning, resource-sharing and service delivery should be linked among child-serving agencies. Through a shared philosophy and coordinated intake, case management and continuity of service provision, the system of care should appear seamless to the family.

Effective: Families should be able to expect positive treatment outcomes for their child. Children and families should be informed of and given access to evidence based practices. When the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of treatment methods  is incomplete, services should be driven by experience, clinical judgment and family preference. Services and systems should be guided by standards for access and quality.

Normalized: Service and supports should be delivered in the least restrictive, most clinically appropriate settings with an emphasis on the natural settings in which children are found, such as families, schools, primary health care settings, day care, and other child serving systems.

Community-focused: Planning, management and decision-making should ensure that resources are designed to meet the unique needs of the local community.