Alternatives to residential treatment (art) - the child center respectfully requests funding for the alternatives to residential treatment (art) program

The child center is seeking a two-year grant to support this program which will address the needs of queens youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and youth with SED and substance use disorders (CO-occurring disorder or COD). We expect that the youth will be ages 10-18 and will be referred by the new york state office of mental health (OMH) or psychiatric hospital emergency rooms. We will serve 364 youth per year (728 total) through this program. For the first few months of the covid-19 pandemic, new york city (and queens in particular, population 2,253,858) was the undisputed EPI-center of the crisis, in terms of cases, deaths and economic impact. Communities that were the hardest HIT were low-income, predominantly black or latinx, with crowded rental housing conditions and where no one family member over five speaks english "very well." this population is the very one the child center serves daily. As of april 2021, 214,699 queens residents contracted covid-19 - almost 10% of the borough's population; 30,418 have been hospitalized and 8,166 have died. In addition, thousands of queens parents have lost employment due to the epidemic. All of these factors have seriously stressed families and exacerbated the mental health and substance abuse issues of family members. The art program will have three components: an intensive outpatient program (IOP), a multi-systemic family therapy (MST) program, and a functional family therapy (FFT) program. The goals are to: 1) increase the resources in new york city to keep youths at risk of residential treatment and psychiatric hospitalization at home; 2) enable 76% (310 of 400) of youths with serious emotional disturbance and CO-occurring substance abuse issues and their families to get a sufficient dose of treatment (i.e., complete the program.); and 3) the programs will demonstrate fidelity to their models and, as predicted, produce measurable improvements in youth functioning and ability to stay at home. For this project, the child center will partner with the NYS office of mental health (OMH). OMH will provide referrals of youth with SED and/or COD, especially from among families that are seeking residential treatment for their children. OMH will also provide $200,000 a year in funding to pay for training program staff in evidence-based interventions, and will continue to be a funding source when the samhsa grant period is over. The child center will collaborate with the city university of NY school of medicine (cuny) for the data collection and reporting. The data collection will be a collaboration with DR. Wenhua LU, PH.d, from cuny. DR. LU was chosen as a partner because her research centers around adolescent health and healthcare disparities, with a focus on underserved populations.