Intensive Family-Based Services Program: A Supportive Alternative to Out-of-Home Placement for Troubled Children and Their Families.

Since 1985 the Southeast Regional Troubled Children's Committee (SERTCC) has formed local committees and promoted interagency collaboration to serve troubled children and their families in 24 counties in southeast Georgia. SERTCC provides intensive family-based services within the homes of dysfunctional families for 12 weeks, with the goal of keeping families together and preventing out-of-home placement of children. In the past 7 years, 203 children and 848 family members have been served through the program. The program has been successful in keeping 80 percent of children in the home and family units intact. Additionally, the cost of intensive family-based services is significantly lower when compared to intermediate care placement and intensive care placement. The goals of SERTCC include ensuring appropriate case resolution and staffing at the local and regional levels, developing effective policies and procedures, developing or facilitating a continuum of community resources to meet the needs of troubled children and their families, supporting services to children through age 22, and increasing the responsiveness of various agencies to the needs of children and their families through staff development and staff training. Includes recommendations for implementing an intensive family-based service program, a map of the area served by SERTCC, and client statistics from 1987-1993. (LP)