Who is Emily Q?
Emily Q is an angel in my eyes or maybe her parents are.
Several years ago her family sued the State of California Department of Health and Human Services Director. The case is cited as [Emily Q. V. Bonta, No. 98-4181 AHM(AIJX), (U.S.D.C, C.D. Cal.).]
So how does Emily Q's legal action affect my life today? Speciffically today?
Emily Q. Resulted in a new service being provided to families of children who meet specific criteria. These services are called Theraputic Behavioral Services commonly refered to as TBS.
TBS brings a trained mental health/ behavior coach into the home, school, and community to work with the at risk child. This is in addition to other mental health services already being provided.
In our case, My daughter receives medication management from a pediatric psychiatrist, therapy from a Licensed Marraige Family Therapist, Case Management from a social worker,
She attends a non-public school for emotionally distrubed children all of whom receive special education services. The school setting has a counseler who works at the local behavioral health care facility on the weekends and a behavior interventionist (a former probation officer) who works to determine what triggers behaviors and comes up with proactive plans to help the student function.
So, today is our first day to have a TBS worker in several years. The worker has been assigned to work with us in an attempt to reduce the most severe behaviors/coping mechanisms my daughter currently has.
The first two weeks we will be doing an assessment to determine our baseline on such behaviors.
This will be followed by making a plan to handle my daughter's triggers. The goal is to be proactive not reactive.
My dauther is currently slated for two months of services for a total of 120 hours.
At the end of two months one of several things will happen:
1) She will have made so much progress she will not need TBS anymore and will be provided Wrap-Around services
2) She will have made some progress but will need additional TBS services and the contract will be extended
3) She will have made no progress or continued to decline in functioning at which point she would return to a long term hospital also refered to as a residential treatment facility.
As a proactive measure, we will be taveling about 4 hours each way to visit a RTF or RTC next week. At the visit we will be doing a pre-placement intake interview to determine if the facility is suitable for her needs should she not make enough progress with her TBS services.
My daughter has been in long term care 3 times in the past. Oct 98-June 2000, Dec 2000-June 2001, and June 2002-June 2003.