Linck Child, Youth & Family Supports has been piloting a new mental health program designed collaboratively with community partners, to meet the needs of children, youth and families with intensive mental health needs.
The new Intensive Outreach program offers several therapeutic approaches to provide children, youth and their caregivers with the skills needed to be successful at home, in school, and in the community.
Services are offered in-home, or in the community, as desired by the family, in order to best support them.
Led by a small, interdisciplinary team, the program delivers mental health treatment including individual and/or family therapy.
The program also has a strong educational/skill-building component for children, youth and their caregivers, to achieve goals co-developed with families. The intervention is expected to provide intense services for 12–16 weeks on average to stabilize families and step them down to other community supports.
“Building on evidence-informed approaches from across the province we are proud to have designed a program with our community partners that will meet a significant need in Chatham-Kent,” said Teri-Thomas-Vanos, Executive Director at Linck.
“We have experienced an unprecedented need for intensive services in the past 3 years, and this program will support families, with an aim of preventing family breakdown.”
The launch of this team is a response to fill the gaps in care left from a series of divestments in Child and Youth mental health services for young people in Chatham-Kent over the past two years. Alongside the loss of two Intensive mental health classrooms and an in-patient program in Windsor, Linck has been unable to secure funding to sustain their hospital crisis programming and will be transitioning crisis services back to the hospital at the end of March 2025.
Over the past 10 years, Linck has provided assessment services to youth under the age of 16 who present at the Emergency department at CKHA with a mental health crisis. Where needed, Linck staff referred youth to in-patient services in Windsor, or provided a safety plan and followed them in the community for an average of 3 weeks post-crisis. The program was very successful coordinating community supports – schools were prepared and made aware of children’s needs upon their return to school and children were linked to community services to support them longer-term. Linck is working with CKHA to transition services back to the hospital.
“We are incredibly disappointed to close our hospital crisis program, as we know it has been a crucial part of our system of supports over the past 10 years,” said Carol Moore, Director of Mental Health, Development & Quality at Linck. “This program has been an ideal example of the care called for in the Ontario government’s Roadmap to Wellness. Unfortunately, due to stagnant funding, increased volumes, and inflationary pressures, the program was no longer viable. We will continue to provide crisis support in the community, with a reduced capacity.”
More details are available at https://linck.org/.
