Family Behavioral Health is an integrated, intensive service area within CCS providing care using a “Wraparound” (Individualized and Tailored) approach. Services are designed for children/youth and families with multiple and complex needs, severe histories and who tend to be involved with multiple child-serving systems. Family Behavioral Health has been among industry innovators who continually “push the envelope” and challenge traditional thinking in social services.

In the ‘70s, through the creation of an original family preservation service called “Homebuilders,” CCS provided an intensive in-home service alternative helping families stay together successfully and at the same time reducing the number of children in out-of-home placements.

Throughout the ‘90s, CCS was involved in a state and national wraparound movement that advocated for parent and professional partnerships. Recognizing that the parents of children with complex needs are a valuable resource, CCS lobbied to effect legislation that recognized parents as paraprofessionals in DCFS state contracts.

In 2000, CCS in Pierce County embarked on another groundbreaking service area called FAST, Family Assessment and Stabilization Team. FAST provides intensive support services to families of children with complex needs who are at risk of psychiatric hospitalization, or out-of-home placement due to family crisis. In its first two years of working with the 500 children served, 87% were able either to remain safely at home or to live with extended family. In Clark County, Crisis Stabilization, a very similar service, has achieved comparable successful outcomes. Since CCS began these services in 2000, Clark County has been able to reduce the number of unnecessary children’s psychiatric hospitalizations (currently the lowest rates in the state) through the use of an array of professional services, extended family, community and natural resources.