Children's Mental Health Service Planning and Coordination

Multi-disciplinary planning teams, often called Family Service Planning Teams are family-focused and community-based, and serve as a focus for identifying supports and service planning for the family. The purpose of the teams is to help the family and other caregivers needing services from more than one agency to develop and implement a workable plan for treating the child's mental health and other service needs while the child remains in the community.

Children staffed by a Multidisciplinary Planning Team or other staffing process may have a case manager assigned to take the lead in coordinating the service plan. If there is more than one program involved with the child, it should be clarified who will have the lead for the overall service plan and who will have primary responsibility for any court-related activities. The service plan should clearly spell out who is responsible for each service plan goal. Any other case plans, such as the Individual Educational Plan, must also be coordinated.