Child, Youth, and Family Crisis Response Teams for Snohomish and Whatcom Counties

North Sound BH-ASO and Compass Health are teaming up to create a new mobile crisis service for families in the region. Mobile crisis teams specializing in children, youth, and families will provide a short-term intervention that is a mobile, on-site, face-to-face therapeutic response to families with young people when they start to notice changes in behavior and need help to figure out what is going on and address it before things get worse. The teams will be available to families when they need it: a core principle of the new program is meeting the sense of urgency that parents and caregivers experience when their child’s behavior begins to change. The program is intended to help families access resources that help them become stronger and more resilient. This, in turn, prevents the need resort to higher intensity and costlier services such as law enforcement or hospitalization.

The child, youth, and family crisis response teams are designed to:

• Meet the needs of children, youth and young adults, and their parents/caregivers in their current living situations and community environments
• Support children, youth, and families by providing trauma-informed care
• Deescalate and mitigate a crisis before more restrictive and costly interventions become necessary * Promote and support safe behavior in home, school, and community settings
• Reduce the use of higher intensity interventions such as emergency departments, juvenile detention, out of home placements, hospitalization, and law enforcement
• Ensure connection to necessary services and supports, including clinical and in-home services, as needed

The program is not only able to respond to the immediate crisis, but also stay with the family to help identify resources and get connected with services and supports that will help sustain them in the long term. Youth and families are encouraged to call anytime – 24/7/365! A mobile team will respond, and a referral will be made to the child, youth, and family crisis response team if they are not the first team available to respond in-person.

Teams will be available soon in both Snohomish and Whatcom counties, and will expand to Skagit County over time. They will be staffed by master’s-level clinicians, family partners, and youth peers.

North Sound Youth and Family Coalition (YFC) will act as the advisory group for this program. Any youth, family member, or system partner interested in ensuring the success of these teams, as well as the entire System of Care for children, youth, young adults, and families in the North Sound region, is invited to get involved. Compensation is available for youth and families, and meeting participants who fill out the monthly survey qualify for a restaurant gift card (the details are on YFC’s website).