Q: Do you only provide services to children?
A: No. We provide services to children and families. For a child to be successful and safe, the entire living environment needs to be addressed. So often, both the child and the family are struggling to understand what is occurring and a program for building a successful support system is very important.

Q: Are all kids who live at SDCC foster children?
A: No. Many of our children in residential care have families who care about the children and want the children to be successful. The issues the child faces are just too severe to be effectively addressed in a home environment.

Q: Do you serve children with physical disabilities or chronic illnesses?
A: We are focused on providing care and treatment for children with behavioral and emotional issues. There are other very effective programs that work with children with physical disabilities and chronic illnesses.

Q: What is Day Treatment?
A: The purpose of this program is to offer a fully integrated mental health intensive day treatment program designed to meet the needs of emotionally disturbed students between the ages of 12 and 15 and to ultimately re-integrate each student into a more normalized and less restrictive setting in an appropriate school district classroom or other educational setting.

Q: How do children qualify for government-paid services?
A: Many of our children are covered by Medi-Cal . The education and day treatment Programs for children will serve AB2726 special education students for which San Diego Children's Mental Health Services has completed an AB2726 mental health assessment and identified, on an IEP, mental health day treatment as the recommended level of mental health service. Consideration will be given to developmental age as well as chronological age of the student.

Q: How long do they stay in the program?
A: Each child has mental health goals written for six months. An IEP is held every six months to review these goals and to determine if it is clinically indicated for the child to continue in day treatment or to begin the discharge process. On average, the students length of stay is a year.

Q: What Services do you provide?
A: Services include clinical consultation to the treatment team, psychiatric psychopharmacological management of each student in day treatment, ordering referrals to specialists for diagnostic and/or special treatment procedures as well as the following core therapeutic services including:

Individual Therapy
Family Therapy
Specialty Group Therapy
Group Therapy
Community Groups
Therapeutic Activities
Behavior Therapy
Crisis Intervention

Q: What are the most common types of behavior or diagnoses that you treat?
A: Students eligible for the program will demonstrate significant impairment in behavioral, social, emotional, psychological, family, school, and community functioning such that they are not able to benefit from the special education programs without mental health services. Moreover, these are students for whom outpatient services have been unable to meet their therapeutic and education needs; who require the intensive structure and daily supervision of a mental health day treatment program, and/or who require "step-down" services from residential treatment to the targeted return school and home environments. Appropriate applicants frequently have experienced multiple risk factors and demonstrate impairments in multiple life domains, including school failure, self care, relationships with peers and family, oppositional behavior, poor self esteem, aggressive or assaultive behavior, lack of motivation, emotional liability and a lack of good judgment. They will also show evidence of a psychiatric disturbance, which typically manifests multiple signs and symptoms in the following diagnostic categories:

Disruptive Behavior Disorders. Significant functional impairment in the areas of distractibility; impulse control; following directions; sustaining or completing tasks; intrusive behavior; listening; maintenance of safe behavior, and anger management. Problems also may include self destructive behavior; uncontrolled anger; arguing with adults; oppositional behavior; poor peer relationships; stealing; lying; truancy from school; fighting with peers; disruptive school behavior; and cruelty to animals.

Anxiety Disorders. Problems with intrusive distressing thoughts; intense distressing perceived recurrences of trauma; ongoing psychological anxiety and distress; distrustful attitude; excessive worry; avoidance of normal feelings, activities, and situations; violent acting out; regressed developmental functioning; flat affect; social isolation; lack of interest in the future; difficulty with sleep; angry outbursts; difficulty with concentration; hypervigalance and scanning; inappropriate sexual behavior; ritualistic behaviors; autonomic hyperactivity; and motor tension.

Mood Disorders. Depressed or irritable mood; labile mood; feelings of hopelessness; sleep difficulties; feelings of worthlessness; low self esteem; difficulty concentrating or making decisions; difficulty paying attention in school; excessive anxiety; difficulty expressing or suppressing impulses; suicidal ideation; delusions or hallucinations consistent with the depressive theme; extreme self centeredness diminished interest in age appropriate activities; social isolation; and excessive fatigue.

Impulse Control Disorders. Assaultive behavior; lack of internal controls; impulsive aggressiveness and/or property destruction; tantrums; impulsive stealing; problems with delaying gratification; forms of acting out; and difficulty anticipating consequences of actions.

Developmental Disorders. Impairments in age appropriate social skills, and of verbal and non verbal communication skills. Problems with positive attachment to care givers. Difficulty identifying feelings of self or others and/or cooperating with others.

The above disturbances should have persisted to the extent that a day treatment level of care is necessary to make progress sufficient for successful functioning in a more normalized environment, but not with a severity of disturbance that requires inpatient treatment. The client must have sufficient intellectual potential as determined by board certified child psychiatrist or licensed clinical psychologist, to make use of a treatment program which will assist in his/her ongoing growth and development. Therefore, the applicant does not carry a diagnosis of autism, and has the intellectual capacity sufficient for the child to make use of a mental health day treatment program.