What is Family Based Mental Health Services?
Pennsylvania’s Family Based Mental Health Services (FBMHS) was created in the 1990s with the goal of empowering caregivers of children who are at risk for removal from their homes due to mental health struggle, child protective, or juvenile justice involvement. The service seeks to strengthen and maintain families by means of therapeutic interventions that improve regulation skills, strengthen attachment, and support family members’ executive functioning in order to care for their child or adolescent in their home and community.
Service Components of Family Based Mental Health Services
In-Home/Community
Seeing a child and their family in their home or community removes the stress of traveling to a provider’s office and allows the team to see the true context of the problem behaviors in the home, school, or community.
Comprehensive
Comprehensive services include family therapy, individual skill-based therapy, case management, basic needs stabilization, crisis services, educational support, and coordinated transitions between levels of care.
Team-Delivered
Services are team delivered by a mental health professional and mental health worker to promote availability, flexibility, diversity of thinking, safety, and continuity of care. All teams receive intensive supervision to ensure quality care to families.
Intensive
The FBMHS team will be there to assist when and where the problems are occurring through 24/7 availability and crisis intervention. Services are delivered based on family clinical need and typically involve multiple sessions per week with the family and their natural support system.
Coordinated
Therapists coordinate care among multiple service providers including education, child and youth services, juvenile justice, substance treatment providers, diversionary services, residential, and inpatient.
Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy: An Essential Component of Family Based Mental Health Services
FBMHS has four components. The service delivers case management, crisis support, family self-sufficiency (FSS) program funds, and Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) to families.
How the program components are delivered to families is directed by the principles of ESFT. ESFT is the clinical model embedded in FBMHS. The way in which Family Based therapists provide each component flows through the clinical model, which values collaboration and empowerment of the family caregivers.
ESFT recognizes that child behaviors and problems occur within the context of relationships between a child and their family, extended family, community, and society. Therefore, changes in family structure and relationship result in improved child and family member functioning.
Principles of Family Based Mental Health Services
Stages of Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy Treatment
Family Based Training Philosophy at YFTI
Our curriculum is designed to foster systemic, skilled application of Ecosystemic Structural Family Therapy (ESFT) across a wide range of child and adolescent issues, developmental stages, family styles, and cultural backgrounds. The training center seeks to provide the skills and tools needed to therapists, supervisors, and agencies to effectively implement FBMHS in accordance with OMHSAS regulations.
Our supportive training seeks to create a collaborative learning community that assists Family Based Programs as they maintain treatment fidelity and continuously improve their intervention effectiveness and outcomes. Graduation from the training center is the first step for a clinician to become a certified Family Based Mental Health Professional or Worker in the State of Pennsylvania.
Charting a course towards professional growth and development together!
Learning Opportunities at the Training Center Include:
Offered in a small group format that provides all newly hired individuals with the essential content and tools needed to begin their Family Based role.
Provides conceptual and practice-based knowledge on essential topics relevant to providing ESFT within Family Based Mental Health Services.
Participants present videotaped clinical sessions for support in applying ESFT conceptualization to clinical scenarios. Clinical training supports clinicians in practicing ESFT skills, in order to enhance their effectiveness and professional growth and development.
Participants present videotaped supervisory sessions aimed at developing their skill set for supervisory processes in the ESFT model and as a Family Based Program leader.
Designed to support continued adherence and fidelity to the ESFT model and the principles of Family Based Mental Health Services. Designed for those clinicians who have greaduated from the core training curriculum.
Provided in an individual or small group format and tailored collaboratively to meet the unique needs of a specific agency or program leader.
Contact Information
Tara Byers, EdD, NCC, LPC, ACS
Family Based Training Director
Youth and Family Training Institute
Email: byerstl2@upmc.edu