Assessing Service Needs For Foster Children Automatically Enrolled Into Behavioral Health Services At Time Of Removal

The present study had an overarching objective of seeking information to better understand the service needs of children entering foster care who are universally enrolled into behavioral health services at the time of their home removal. The first specific aim was to examine how various case attributes (i.e., aspects of a child’s background, personal and familial characteristics, and CPS involvement) related to behavioral health needs at entry, represented by global functioning ratings and service intensity scores. A second specific aim was to explore the existence of natural groupings of foster youth to examine if meaningful groupings occur in relation to demographic and risk and factors. Finally, this study sought to evaluate service needs of subgroups of foster children who are typically under-referred for services. Data were collected from records of 327 school-age youth who were automatically enrolled into treatment from one community-based outpatient behavioral health provider at the time of home removal. The results of this study showed that the average school-age child entering foster care is performing in the at-risk range of global functioning (mean CGAS score of 69.23) and requires at least short-term behavioral health intervention services and/or recovery monitoring (mean CASII Composite Score of 13.1). With respect to severity of impaired functioning, the results indicated that racial background, medical history, speech problems, school grade level (e.g.,