BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES Consultation Services Behavior consultation, meetings & court appearance: Our behavioral consultation services provide professional support to children, teens, and adults with developmental delays and/ or emotional issues who are experiencing difficulty fully participating in their homes, schools, and communities due to behavioral health issues. We attempt to identify the barriers to success and recommend short and long term solutions to improve the quality of life for persons served. At Connections, we believe each person served has unique assets to contribute to their health, family, and community. Our person-centered approach to behavior change strives to honor these strengths and customize supports to meet individual needs. Connections believes that by maximizing assets, developing comprehensive support plans, creating meaningful communication tools & facilitating friendships we can help persons served to make more healthy & positive choices for themselves. Our licensed Masters and PhD level Consultants are available to provide support and recommendations within family homes, school systems, civil and criminal courts as well. Behavior support plan: Our Consultants are available to develop behavioral health recommendations to address the mental health needs of an identified child, teen, or adult at all levels of need. Our plans provide practical suggestions, proactive strategies, and reactive response plans across all environments. For example, therapeutic plans may be useful for families in crisis, school staff struggling to keep an identified student & the school safe, or juvenile or adult offenders transitioning back into the community. Functional behavior assessment: Our Functional Behavior Assessments are conducted as regular protocol to identify the cause or function of behavioral issues which are impacting the health, safety, or quality of life of persons served and those around them. Based upon their professional experiences, our Consultants seek to identify the causation of the issue in order to suggest appropriate treatment or service plans. Evaluation Services Diagnostic and Mental Status Evaluations: Diagnostic and Mental Status Evaluations are useful to help identify any mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders that may be present in an individual. The evaluations are face to face and typically last between one and two hours. In the session, the examiner explores different areas including intellectual, memory, reasoning, and personality function. The examiner will provide a written report to be useful as a reference source. Forensic evaluation: Forensic evaluations engage the questions of criminal responsibility and competency to stand trial. Typically these questions are asked by a defense attorney, the persons accused, or by the initiative of the court. Forensic evaluations address these two questions as well as assist in addressing any other opinions that the attorney may have in protecting the rights of the accused. These evaluations may be done in an agency office if the defendant is not confined. If the defendant is confined, than the evaluation may take place in the location of the defendant. Through this process, the evaluator may also contract to be present for any hearings to testify. Psycho-educational evaluation: Psycho educational evaluations are designed to determine any issues that are involved in academic functions. The tests conducted will address but are not limited to any learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and overall the likely learning potential based on intellectual function. The evaluation process typically includes a test battery including, individual IQ tests, education achievement tests, personality tests, and other screening instruments that determine the presence of any serious memory deficits, behavior control problems and other issues. Written test reports will be provided and the evaluator’s contract may allow for him/ her to engage with school staff in instances where the report will be considered as part of an IEP conference. Psychological Evaluations: Psychological evaluations answer specific questions about intellectual, academic, behavior, or mental health functions. Psychological evaluations are designed to respond to a specific question about psychological functioning, but may also involve issues involved in forensic evaluation or psycho-educational evaluations. Psychological evaluations may include formal testing, mental status examinations, social history, and diagnostic reviews. Therapy Services Individual & Group Psychotherapy & Counseling: Our individual and group counseling services provide therapeutic support to children, adults, and families in times of emotional stress or behavioral crisis. Our team of licensed therapists and psychologists assist persons who may be struggling to maintain or improve their mental health to identify their goals and any issues which may make achieving them difficult. Together, they discuss these issues and develop interventions to help the person served and their family or support network manage them. Connections currently offers individual and group counseling services on-site at area schools, community centers and social service agencies, and at our office in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Relationship & Family Counseling: Relationship counseling is an effort to manage and mend relationships that are conflicted by differences and repeating patterns of distress. Relationship counseling typically includes members of a family, couples, or even coworkers. Our counseling emphasizes such factors as relationships and more positive, healthful communication patterns rather than traits or symptoms in individual members. Social History: A comprehensive social history for an individual will include an assessment of their family of origin, current social support networks, psychosocial history, present environmental strengths and weaknesses, and community networks. Recognizing we all set up patterns based on these factors and our preset patterns can and will affect our relationships as we proceed on our life journey, such information can be critical in future planning. The social history is completed either independent of other reports or as a supplement to psychological testing. Comprehensive Family Profile, Parenting &/ or Bonding Assessments with MMPI or MIM: Family profiles and parenting assessments are frequently requested by courts and child advocacy/ protection agencies in situations where the ability to parent effectively is being evaluated. Evaluations typically consist of observations of the parent as individuals, as well as, observations of the parent together with the child. Using personality and parenting assessment instruments such as the MMPI or MIM along with other standardized tests, we are able to highlight the strengths and challenges of the parent-child relationship and then make recommendations for a healthy and safe environment for the identified family. |
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