The Youth Villages Intensive In-Home Services program provides research-based treatment to troubled children and families in their own homes. Counselors with small case loads -- four to five families -- focus on helping the child and family at home, in school and in the community, and address peer influences. The program helps children of any age (infant to 18) with serious emotional and behavioral problems, including those with juvenile justice, child welfare, or mental health issues.

The program is successful in both preventing at-risk children from entering residential care and returning them home to live successfully with their families following out-of-home placements. Intensive In-Home Services provides proven alternatives to children and youth who otherwise would be placed in residential treatment, detention centers, hospitals or other juvenile facilities. Counselors also divert children from foster care placements and reunite children who have been in foster care -- sometimes for lengthy periods -- with their families through Intensive In-Home Services. The Youth Villages program is effective in stabilizing and strengthening at-risk, special-needs adoptions.

Since 1994, Youth Villages has helped more than 14,000 children in their homes and communities. Two years following completion of the program, 80 percent of the children were living successfully at home or in a home-like environment. Treatment for reunification cases averages six to nine months, and four to six months for prevention or diversion. All treatment is family-centered and includes strength-based interventions.

What We Do

Youth Villages family counselors:

• Conduct a thorough family, school, peer, and community assessment.
• Identify specific goals and assign measurable tasks to the child and family.
• Monitor the family's progress by conducting family sessions a minimum of three times a week.
• Empower the family to manage the child's behaviors at home and at school.
• Develop targeted interventions until the family reaches the goals established in the treatment plan.

Youth Villages family counselors are on-call 24 hours a day and carry low case loads of 4-5 families.

In addition to providing individual and family therapy, they offer other valuable services, including:

• Engaging families in their role of supervising and supporting their children -- including consistency, discipline, and communication.
• Family and individual therapy -- addressing marital issues and other parent-centered problems.
• Educational achievement -- including the role of the family in building positive student/school and parent/teacher relationships.
• Strategies to address aggression, problem sexual behaviors, and other specialized issues.
• Teaching problem-solving skills, coping strategies, social skills, and development of positive peer relations.
• Help in accessing community resources -- including support from relatives and others in the community.
• Crisis prevention and intervention.

The Cost

Intensive In-Home Services offers the best chance for children and families to live successfully, and the cost of treatment is substantially less than that of a residential facility.

We have treatment contracts with many states to provide effective help to children touched by the states' child welfare, mental health, or juvenile justice departments.