Services
Return Home Early Project
Keeping families together with children in their home community is the key to achieving long lasting results. Out of home placement is an important part of the system of care for children’s mental health but should be used after all community supports have been exhausted. Research has continued to show that intensive community based services, like Wraparound, can lead to more successful outcomes when overcoming mental illness.
Kids Oneida has created a collaborative effort between placement agencies, local departments of social services, families, and children to successfully reunite children with their families earlier than planned when placed at the highest level of out of home placement. The Return Home Early Project (RHE) is intended to identify those children in Residential Treatment Centers (RTC) and Group Homes (GH) that have maximized their therapeutic benefit and link them with intensive community supports in their home communities to ensure continued progress.
Since January 2008, KO has dedicated a full time Residential Outreach Manager to provide independent assessments on all children placed in Oneida County Custody in the RTC and GH level of care. In 2011 alone, RHE efforts have assisted the return home early of 18 children at the residential and group home levels of care and the movement of 2 children to a lower level of care, facilitating a cost avoidance of approximately $522,060 for Oneida County. Since its inception in 2008, this collaboration has led to an expedited reunification of over 120 children early saving almost 12,500 days of care and an approximate cost avoidance of approximately of $4.15 million dollars. Furthermore, the total number of children placed at the RTC and Group Home levels of care has decreased in Oneida County by more than 50% since RHE program initiatives began full time in 2008. And potentially, even more impressive is the fact that 85% of the children continue to remain at home as productive members of their community.
In June 2008, Herkimer County agreed to pilot a similar Return Home Early project through the assistance of Kids Oneida. This program led to the creation of Kids Herkimer. The creation of Kids Herkimer has led to the cost avoidance of over $1.3 million while engaging children in Wraparound services at home as opposed to keeping them in placement through their court ordered date.