Youth and family tree - lifestream behavioral center's children clinical onsite services has expanded their continuum of care by offering the youth and family tree program

This program will enhance and expand comprehensive treatment, early intervention, and recovery support services for at-risk adolescents, youth and their families/primary caregivers with mental health disorders, substance use disorders, and those who are CO-occurring. The goal is to provide these services to the youth and their families who reside in citrus, lake, and sumter counties, florida. Treatment includes group and individual therapy for at-risk children, adolescents, and their primary caregivers; including family therapy, parenting support groups, child-parent relationship treatment services, as well as assessments and treatment referrals for any CO-occurring or substance use disorders identified. Our goal is to break the lines of generational trauma by working with the whole family unit. Through multiple evidence-based practices, youth and family tree staff will provide a whole-system approach, screen participants by using assessments to identify parental stress levels, behavioral and social emotional issues, trauma reactions, child-parent relationship issues, substance use or misuse, and mental health diagnoses. Our program goals include strengthening the child-parent relationship, decrease parental stress, decrease externalizing behaviors that are unhealthy and lead to substance use, and improve the level of functioning within the entire family unit. Some of our objectives for this program are decreasing assessment scores in at least 75% of participants from pre to post-treatment, screen 100% of caregiver participants for substance use, mental health, and trauma to provide appropriate treatment, and increase the level of function in 75% of youth participants. The youth and family tree program plans to serve 65 unduplicated participants by the end of year one and reach 100 youth in year two, continually adding to that number in each subsequent year to serve a total of 510 participants throughout the lifetime of the project. This program is so vital to the rural communities that ccos serves where there are high rates of opioid use and access to drugs and alcohol for at-risk youth.