Children's Mental Health Services in Westchester County are among the finest in the nation. Westchester has a strong tradition of offering children and families a quality, coordinated, community-based system of care. 

  
All of the services share common core values:

• Individualized attention
• Family-driven
• Strength-based
• Culturally competent
• Unconditional care

Westchester County actively participates in a three-tiered state structure known as the Coordinated Children’s Services Initiative. Services focus on the needs of children and families with serious social, emotional and behavioral challenges that cross all of the child-serving systems. 

• Tier I are the community-based networks made up of parents, professionals, and service providers who come together with families to share resources and coordinate services.
• Tier II is the county-wide cross-system planning structure that responds to county-wide issues and concerns identified by children and families.
• Tier III represents the seven state agencies with joint responsibility for overseeing the state’s child-serving system.

Westchester Community Network serves as one of three Team Learning Centers in the country, along with Wraparound Milwaukee in Wisconsin and the Dawn Project in Indianapolis, to assist communities in the development of effective systems of care for children and families. A Team Learning Center is a dynamic “living laboratory” that allows communities to experience in a hands-on way the best efforts of a community that has had success in developing its own system of care. Its peer-to-peer technical assistance serves as a viable source of information, support and creative ideas.

Communities use the Team Learning Center approach when they want the real life assistance of a successful system-of-care community that has developed innovative, sustainable responses to the core issues facing developing systems-of-care. In the same way that family support provides authentic and informed assistance to families, the Team Learning Center utilizes real experience and proven solutions to assist developing system-of-care communities in their process of transformation.

Child and Family Clinic Plus, a state initiative, promotes partnerships between children’s mental health clinics and natural settings in the community, such as school districts and day care centers, to provide on-site mental health screening of children with the consent of their parents. The goal is to offer children mental health services earlier, rather than later. For children identified with emotional needs, clinics can provide comprehensive assessments, in-home services and evidence-based treatments.

Early Step Forward, a Westchester County initiative, combines mental health and early childhood services in day care and Head Start centers in three communities in southern Westchester. Utilizing an evidence-based curriculum to respond to the social and emotional needs of all children, the program provides services and support for individual children and families that require additional help. The model incorporates:

• Early childhood networks in locak communities
• Early childhood support groups through Family Ties
• A Learning Collaborative that supports quality program development and evaluation

    
For additional information on Children’s Mental Health Services call (914) 995-5246