Enhanced Clinical Community Support Program (ECCS) Grant

The Enhanced Clinical Community Support Program (ECCS) provides vital support for youth transitioning from inpatient psychiatric treatment to community-based foster homes. By integrating community clinicians into family teams, the program aims to empower caregivers and caseworkers, enhancing their capacity to address the unique mental health needs of the youth. Key services include caregiver support, psychoeducation, and coordinated case management, all designed to prevent crises and promote stability, safety, and well-being in families.

Enhanced Clinical Community Support is a program that expands service delivery for youth who are preparing to discharge from inpatient psychiatric treatment, to promote stabilization in a community based foster home setting and reduce mental health crises resulting in hospitalization. The Community Clinician joins the family team while the youth is in the hospital, to support service planning and strengthen the skills of both caregivers and caseworkers to meet the increased psychiatric needs of the youth upon return to a home. Services and interventions provided through the Enhanced Clinical Community Support program will aim to increase the strengths and resiliency of the youth, caseworker, and their caregiving team, by empowering the team to meet the unique mental health needs of the youth, prevent return to a higher level of care, through establishing a foundation of trauma informed care to specifically relieve symptoms related to complex trauma. This is achieved through caregiver support (both individually and group) and psychoeducation, clinical consultation and concrete case management support for the case management team, and more frequent child and family team meetings to promote coordination of services.
Services are to promote permanency by maintaining, strengthening and safeguarding the functioning of families to:
prevent substitute care placementpromote family reunificationstabilize foster care placementsfacilitate youth developmentensure the safety, permanency and wellbeing of children