a handbook for parents of children with autism spectrum disorders

APPENDIX E:
LEVELS OF CARE/
TREATMENT AVAILABLE
and returns to his or her primary residence daily.
School-Based Partial Hospital Programs (SBPH) — SBPH provides licensed mental health partial
hospital services for select children and adolescents with serious emotional and mental health needs.
These programs can take place in an approved private school and/or an alternative setting such as an
outpatient provider. Placement in such settings is normally initiated by the student’s home school district
when the district can no longer effectively meet the student’s education needs within its programs.
Students in SBPH programs have Individualized Educational Plans as well as formal mental health
treatment plans covering the range of strengths, needs, and goals of the programs.
Outpatient Services — These types of services include a range of short-term and long-term treatments
which vary with the child’s diagnosis, severity of illness, coping skills, and available support systems.
Outpatient treatment may include medication evaluations, medication management, individual therapy,
family therapy, and group therapy, and may include treatments such as positive behavior support, social
skills, cognitive based interventions, and communication. Group therapy may be particularly beneficial
for children and adolescents with ASD when the focus of the group is to enhance communication
and social skill development. While the range of Autism-specific outpatient programs differs widely
in different geographic areas, the development of such programs continues to be a focus of many
providers statewide.
Resource Coordinator (RC) — This individual helps to link families to services, identifies appropriate
supports/resources including both mental health and educational settings, aids in transportation to and
from medical/psychiatric appointments, and identifies community supports.
Intensive Case Manager (ICM) — An ICM is very similar to an RC and can link families to services,
identify appropriate supports/resources including both mental health and educational settings, aid
in transportation to and from medical/psychiatric appointments, identify community supports, and
monitor medication compliance. Children involved with an ICM have access to 24-hour on-call ICMs for
assistance in a mental health crisis.
Crisis Services — These services may be accessed through a medical or psychiatric hospital
emergency room or crisis center or via a mobile crisis team. A mobile crisis team provides individual or
team-delivered intervention in the member’s home, school, work, or community to address the crisis
situation. Regardless of the method of crisis intervention, the main goal of crisis services is to establish
safety, provide stabilization, and divert hospitalization when possible.
- Page 37 -