We have provided our Intensive In-Home Services to children and families in Dallas County, Texas through a contract with the county's Juvenile Department since 2001. The program helps children who would otherwise be placed in residential facilities.

Family counselors provide intensive treatment to troubled children and families where most behavioral problems emerge - in the home. The program produces high success rates and is cost effective. The average cost of treatment for the program is less than one-fourth the cost of an eight-month stay in a facility, and is 70 percent better than out-of-home treatment alone in cutting the chance of repeated problems.

Counselors have small caseloads, allowing them to provide intensive help to the families they serve. Counselors meet with the family in the home at least three times a week during the three to five month treatment period, and are on-call 24-hours a day to intervene in an emergency.

The program, launched in 1994, utilizes the nationally recognized Multisystemic Therapy (MST) model, which is based on more than 20 years of successful clinical trials with seriously troubled children and youth.

In Multisystemic Therapy, counselors address all areas (or systems) that may affect or enable a child's behavior - family, school, peers, individual needs and community environment.

MST has been proven effective in helping young people who might otherwise be placed in residential treatment, detention centers, psychiatric hospitals or other residential juvenile facilities. Youth who are returning to their families from out-of-home placements can also benefit from services.

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 daily and weekly.
• Conduct family sessions a minimum of three times a week or more.
• Empower the family to manage the child's behaviors at home and at school.
• Develop additional tasks until the family has reached the goals established in the treatment plan.

Other services include:

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