Intensive Home Based Services Within a Comprehensive System of Care for Youth

• Published in: Journal of child and family studies 2010-06, Vol.19 (3), p.318-325
• Main Authors: Daleiden, Eric L., Pang, Dawn, Roberts, Deborah, Slavin, Lesley A., Pestle, Sarah L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescents; Anxiety Disorders; Behavior Change; Behavior Disorders; Behavior Modification; Behavior Problems; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Behavioural psychology; Child and School Psychology; Child Welfare; Children & youth; Community Relations; Environment; Ethnicity; Functional Behavioral Assessment; Functional impairment; Hawaii; Health Services; Home based services; Home health care; Intensive treatment; Interrater Reliability; Juvenile Justice; Mainstreaming; Management Information Systems; Mental health; Mental health care; Mental Health Programs; Mental health services; Original Paper; Outcome Measures; Predictive Validity; Principals; Psychology; Rating Scales; Regression analysis; Residential Care; Resistance (Psychology); Social psychology; Social Sciences; Social services; Sociology; Young people; Youth
• ISSN: 1062-1024; 1573-2843
• DOI: 10.1007/s10826-009-9300-z

Within a comprehensive mental health service array for youth, Intensive Home Based Services (IHBS) are designed to meet the needs of youth with significant emotional and behavioral problems in their home communities, avoiding the need for out-of-home services, particularly residential care. We examined youth receiving IHBS as their first service in the state of Hawaii system of care ( N  = 163) to determine how successful IHBS were in preventing the need for more restrictive services within 12 months of intake. Subsequently, we investigated characteristics that might be predictive of a youth’s need for service intensification within 12 months. Logistic regression analyses found that greater age, level of service need, and functional impairment at intake predicted use of more restrictive services within 12 months of intake, whereas gender, ethnicity, diagnosis, service intensity, and clinician credentials did not. Overall, our findings suggested that IHBS were reasonably successful in preventing residential placements, and provided some basis for determining characteristics of youth likely to require more restrictive placements within a one year period.