Child and Family Services

The Mental Health Center of Denver's Child and Family Services is the leading area resource for comprehensive treatment for children ages 0-18 years old, including those with serious emotional disturbances (SED).

Here a full range of community-based mental health services provides effective, flexible and individualized treatment solutions that support the needs of growing children and their families.

Our highly trained and experienced staff is dedicated to providing responsive, culturally competent services in the most natural, least restrictive setting possible. We encourage full participation of family members and work to coordinate with the entire child-service system of care.

We are dedicated to:

Providing community based mental health service to support and empower families.
Maintaining children in the home and community.
Increasing hope for the future and control over one's life.
Enhancing families' ability to access internal and natural community resources.

Community-Based Child & Family Services

What we offer:

Assessment and evaluation to identify specific problems as well as strengths and resources
Individual, family and group therapy available in a variety of settings including school-based services
Medication evaluation and management
Crisis intervention
Case management, care coordination, and referrals
Therapeutic Day Treatment program
Intensive in-home family therapy services
Training and consultation of children's mental health issues

Coordinating Care

Through an extensive network of interagency relationships, MHCD strives to offer a responsive, easy-to-access system of care for children and families.

MHCD collaborates with local health, and human service organizations and schools to extend our reach of services into the community by providing onsite mental health care through existing partnerships with these groups:

Denver Collaborative Partnership
Family Agency Collaboration Denver's Family to Family Initiative
Metro Denver Head Start Centers
Denver Public Schools
Gilliam Youth Services Center
Cross Community Coalition
Urban Peak
Lowry Family Center

PEARL – Parent/Provider Effectiveness in Early Learning Environments

The PEARL Program is an outcomes-based prevention and early intervention program that provides on site clinical and educational resources to assist children and families enrolled in early care and educational settings, including Head Start programs.

PEARL utilizes best practices in early identification and intervention by providing :

On-site classroom support for teachers
Individualized treatment for children and their families
Consultation to center/program administrators
Linkages to community resources

Proven PEARL Outcomes

Marked improvement in children's behavior
Increased parent empowerment and ability to nurture and support their children
Expanded competencies of teachers and non-familial caregivers to promote social-emotional development and recognize early signs of distress in young children.

PEARL services are offered in English and Spanish.

Intervention Outpatient Services

Clinic-based Outpatient Services – Ages 3-18

MHCD offers two Child and Family Clinics with convenient access in West Denver.

Services include:

Intake, assessment and evaluation
Individual, family and group therapy
Medication evaluations and medication management, as needed
Crisis intervention Case Management
Care coordination and referrals
Youth transition to adulthood

Using Best Practice Approaches

Voz y Corazón brings artists and Latina girls together with a focus on suicide prevention and creativity.
MHCD therapists offer Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) for children and adolescents that have experienced trauma.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) groups help adolescents to be more mindful and to communicate more effectively.
MHCD uses combined approaches for children with ADHD in a best practice approach that helps children better regulate their behavior, promotes skill in parents of children with ADHD and uses medication as indicated.
MHCD's excellent staff includes 6 child psychiatrists, 2 advanced practice nurses, 1 medical nurse and 11 clinical staff.

Family Trauma Treatment Program Ages 3-18

MHCD is a forerunner in the field of child traumatic stress and provides services that combine best practices and clinical research with the experience of front-line community providers.

We are a member of a national coalition called the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), an organization dedicated to improving the quality and effectiveness and availability of therapeutic service for children, adolescents and families affected by traumatic events.

As a part of the this network, MHCD has developed and disseminated effective evidence-based treatments, collected data for systematic studies and helped educate professionals and the public about the effects of trauma on children.

Intensive In-Home Family Therapy Services – Ages 3-17

This intensive program serves children, and youth with serious emotional disturbances and serious disruptive or delinquent behavior who are at risk of out-of-home placement, juvenile detention or hospitalization. It also serves children and youth who are transitioning from higher levels of care (i.e. hospitalization) back into the community.

Helping families

The Intensive In-Home Family Services team utilizes cutting-edge research supported approaches to address the needs of clients and their families. Helping families develop effective coping skills to meet the challenges of raising a child with serious emotional or behavioral disturbance. This program encourages and helps the family develop a network of community support.

This intensive mode of treatment team approach is time limited and involves a treatment team approach.

3-10 per week with the client, family, and systems support
Average 3-4 months

Intensive Day Treatment – Grades 1 - 8

Intensive Day Treatment provides full-day educational and therapeutic services to children with severe emotional, mental or behavioral disorders that prevent them from benefiting from traditional school settings.

Our Goal

We use child-centered, family-focused and strengths-based models throughout all treatments modalities. Our goal is to enrich the lives and minds of all children and families we serve by helping them develop healthy relationships, empower them to make healthy life choices and to transition successfully back to a less intensive school and community setting.

Program Elements

We have developed the day treatment program based on the belief that helping children learn to build healthy relationships can significantly increase their overall functioning and improve their quality of life.

Students are required to have a current Individualized Education Plan (IEP) to be eligible for the program.
Our licensed special educators use the IEP, consultation with the family, prior school personnel and clinical providers, as well as formal and informal assessments to develop specialized programs that best meet each child's educational and emotional needs.
A mental health treatment team supports teachers.
Day Treatment blends academic subjects with a variety of treatment services:
- psychiatric services,
- medication management,
- individual therapy and group therapy,
- family support services, and
- case management.

We can also access other services for our consumers through MHCD and the community such as In-home Services or high fidelity wraparound as needed.

Animal Assisted Therapy

Our program offers students an opportunity to work individually with therapy dogs as well as participate in our BARK (Behavioral Aggression Reduction in Kids) program. BARK uses animal assisted therapy in collaboration with the Denver Dumb Friends League to provide both therapy and humane education. Animal Assisted Therapy has shown promising results in reducing aggressive behavior by providing students opportunities to develop pro-social skills with the families, other students and program staff.