Our Priorities

• Early Care and Education
• Youth Development
• Children With Intensive Needs
  • Success Stories
  • Strategies
  • Results
  • Funding
  • Training
• Equal Justice for All Youth
• Making Services Better

> Children With Intensive Needs

Children with intensive needs are those who have severe emotional disabilities and/or who are abusing substances or who have severe developmental disabilities. About 5% of Montgomery County’s 250,000 children could be classified as having intensive needs.

Our work involves a coalition of providers who meet to champion the needs of this group of children. Together, they direct parents to the most appropriate services; lead efforts to bring fragmented resources together on both the family and program levels; and build effective, community-based programs—all contributing to our local system of care.

A Pathway to Services

A bi-lingual staff person is waiting to lead you down a family-friendly pathway to services and supports to help you and your child with emotional and/or behavioral needs. Our staff will engage you and your family as well as other providers involved in the life of your child to find those needed services as quickly as possible. Your child may also be eligible to be referred to the Local Coordinating Council and/or be connected to other resources in the community such as being linked to a family navigator. Through the Montgomery County Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, a family navigator, who has shared similar experiences with their own children, will provide you and your family with mentoring and coaching to help you advocate on your child’s behalf. To access this Pathway to Services, please call 301-354-4905.

Local Care Team

The LCT is the next stop in the system of care for many families. As an interagency team of public child-serving agencies along with consistent family-voice representation, the members problem solve how to best use local resources to keep the family intact and increase both adult and child/youth family members’ functioning. The LCT is the pathway to wraparound services in the community.  It also reviews cases of children and youth that meet eligibility to be placed in high cost residential programs in-state or out-of-state.

Wraparound

This is a strengths-based family driven process that puts in place an array of services and informal supports that help strengthen families and addresses emotional and behavioral concerns within the community. Basically, your family is wrapped in supports with the help of a Care Coordinator.

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