Caregiver:
A person who has special training to help people with mental health problems. Examples of people with this special training are social workers, teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and mentors.

Case Manager:
An individual who organizes and coordinates services and supports for children with mental health problems and their families. (Alternate terms: service coordinator, advocate, and facilitator.)

Case Management:
A service that helps people arrange appropriate and available services and supports. As needed, a case manager coordinates mental health, social work, education, health, vocational, transportation, advocacy, respite, and recreational services. The case manager makes sure that the child's and family's changing needs are met. (This definition does not apply to managed care.)

Child Protective Services:
Designed to safeguard the child when there is suspicion of abuse, neglect, or abandonment, or where there is no family to take care of the child. Examples of help delivered in the home include financial assistance, vocational training, homemaker services, and day care. If in-home supports are insufficient, the child may be removed from the home on a temporary or permanent basis. The goal is to keep the child with his or her family whenever possible.

Children and Adolescents at Risk for Mental Health Problems:
Children at higher risk for developing mental health problems when certain factors occur in their lives or environment. Some of these factors are physical abuse, emotional abuse or neglect, harmful stress, discrimination, poverty, loss of loved one, frequent moving, alcohol and other drug use, trauma, and exposure to violence.

Continuum of Care:
A term that implies a progression of services that a child would move through, probably one at a time. The more up-to-date idea is one of comprehensive services. See systems of care and wraparound services.

Coordinated Services:
Child-serving organizations, along with the family, talk with each other and agree upon a plan of care that meets the child's needs. These organizations can include mental health, education, juvenile justice, and child welfare. Case management is necessary to coordinate services. (Also see family-centered services and wraparound services.)

Crisis Residential Treatment Services:
Short-term, round-the-clock help provided in a non-hospital setting during a crisis. For example, when a child becomes aggressive and uncontrollable despite in-home supports, the parent can have the child temporarily placed in a crisis residential treatment service. The purpose of this care is to avoid inpatient hospitalization, to help stabilize the child, and to determine the next appropriate step.

Cultural Competence:
Help that is sensitive and responsive to cultural differences. Caregivers are aware of the impact of their own culture and possess skills that help them provide services that are culturally appropriate in responding to people's unique cultural differences, such as race and ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, or physical disability. They adapt their skills to fit a family's values and customs.