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Animal Assisted Therapy for Vulnerable Youth
For almost two decades, North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center has been utilizing Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) in outpatient mental health work with youths and their families, working in partnership with local canine and equine organizations. An adjunct to traditional therapy, AAT relies...
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Care Coordination Enhances the Medical Model for Individuals with Substance Abuse Disorder
WellLife Network recently launched the Substance Abuse Care Coordination Team, a specialized program within their Long Island Care Management Division, designed to address the needs of the Medicaid Substance Use Disorder (SUD) population. Care Management is a comprehensive person-centered...
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Elder Abuse: A Challenge to the Mental Health System
As the elder boom gathers momentum over the next 25 years, there will be more and more victims of elder abuse. America’s mental health system is not prepared to respond appropriately. It is not prepared to effectively engage victims, who are often suspicious of offers of help; it is not...
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Innovation and Efficacy Modeled at ANDRUS: Meeting a Vulnerable Population Using a Sensory and Body Regulation Approach
Meeting a Vulnerable Population Where They are At Some children experience mental and behavioral difficulties that make their daily life a challenge. They struggle to regulate their emotions and cope with a world that isn’t always receptive to their reactive behavioral outbursts. At risk...
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The System-of-Care Movement Through a Trauma-Informed Lens: Implications for Systems Transformation
Trying to change systems is never an easy task. Efforts to encourage, argue, incentivize, and mandate change, are often met with piecemeal results, only to revert back to business as usual. On rare occasions however, profound change can happen quickly and even effortlessly. These changes often...
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“Children’s System of Care” in Westchester County, New York
The System of Care concept for children and adolescents with mental health challenges and their families was first published in 1986 in an article by Beth Stroul and Robert Friedman. They articulated a definition for a System of Care along with a framework and philosophy to guide its...
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SIMHS SafeTY.net Early Intervention Program Fills Gaps in Services for Staten Island Youth Battling Trauma-Related Substance Use/Abuse
For more than a decade, Staten Island has been harboring a shameful secret that is only recently coming to light. Our Island outranks each borough, as well as the whole of New York City and State, in the rate of adolescent drug and alcohol abuse, including binge drinking and use of prescription...
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The Right Support
Creating an atmosphere of inclusion and acceptance for all people coming to an organization for help begins with the core values of that agency. Here, at ICL, we believe in and offer person-centered, recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, and integrated physical and behavioral healthcare. No matter a...
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Substance Use Disorder and the LGBTQ Youth Community
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared with the general population, gay and bisexual men, lesbian and transgender individuals have higher rates of substance abuse, are more likely to use alcohol and drugs and to continue heavy drinking into later life...
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Building a Quality Behavioral Health Workforce: Employing Service-User Perspectives Throughout Your Organization
With the introduction of Managed Behavioral Health Care in October of 2015 and the soon to be implemented Home and Community Based Services (HCBS), engagement of “peers” in the workforce has become a topic of considerable interest. HCBS introduces peer support as a Medicaid billable service...
