Psychological Services for Children/Families Involved with the Child Welfare System
If you are an ODHS Caseworker making a referral, please read carefully!
MindSights provides a wide variety of psychological assessment and evaluation services to and on behalf of children and youth directly referred by the State of Oregon’s Department of Human Services (ODHS). These services include:
RAPID Program
The RAPID Program provides initial norm-referenced, psychometrically-informed screening assessments of mental health, behavioral adjustment, developmental status and academic skills for all children (ages 1 through 18) entering ODHS custody in Multnomah and Washington counties. Individual caseworkers do not need to initiate referrals or complete paperwork to authorize these services. Instead, referrals are completed automatically by local branches, and are funded by the child’s health plan. For more information on our RAPID program, click here.
Comprehensive Psychological Assessments
Comprehensive Psychological Assessments authorized and funded through the OHA/ODHS Administrative Examination system. These evaluations represent a way of obtaining information about a young person’s adjustment, needs, neurodevelopment, strengths, functioning, diagnoses, etc. Typically, such evaluations focus on identifying personal strengths and/or clarifying diagnoses for informing treatment/service planning. Procedures typically include interviews with caregiver(s) and/or other significant adults in the young person’s life; interviews with the young person themselves; administration of a large battery of psychological and cognitive tests tailored to the person’s presenting issues; review of any available clinical, child-welfare and/or educational records; preparation of a lengthy written report; and one or more debriefing sessions with the young person’s caregiver(s) and child welfare caseworker (and other parties, at the caseworker’s request).
Best Interest Evaluation
Best Interest Evaluations, authorized and funded either through an OHA/ODHS Administrative Examination or as arranged by a child’s/adolescent’s attorney. These evaluations are a sub-type of the Comprehensive Psychological Evaluation described above, and they include professional opinions/findings regarding permanency-related considerations; the caregiving skills/traits that will be needed to meet the individual’s needs over the long term; the supports and services that will help a “forever home” be successful; the treatment and/or activities that will facilitate more secure attachments between the child and their “forever parents,” etc.
Relational Assessments
For ODHS Caseworkers: MindSights can and does provide comprehensive, state-of-the-art Child-Parent Relationship Assessments and Sibling Relationship Assessments. These include interviews regarding the history of child-parent and/or sibling relationships; clinical assessment of relational health, to include psychological testing as relevant; observations of relational dynamics in real-time; and review of all relevant/available child welfare records; a lengthy written summary of results. These evaluations are typically needed to gain a deeper understanding of a child’s attachment relationship a specific adult or sibling. Among other applications, results can be used to identify services/treatments that may be needed to improve the child-parent relationship; to identify strengths/risks in sibling relationships; and/or to inform decisions regarding placement of siblings together vs. separately.
However, the Oregon Department of Human Services’ (ODHS) Central Office has made it clear that these assessments will not be funded, even when the State is requesting them. Therefore, until further notice, we do not know of any way that Child Welfare caseworkers can refer kids or families to us for these services.
For Attorneys: Attorneys seeking Child-Parent Relationship Assessments and/or Sibling Relationship Assessments services for their child client(s) under the Oregon Public Defender System (OPDS) should contact our admin team at 503-222-0707 or [email protected] to schedule a consultation on authorizing these services.
Authorization
For information about how to authorize MindSights to provide one or more of these psychological services (other than a RAPID assessment), please refer to the Instructions for ODHS Caseworkers: Authorizing Psychological Services with MindSights.
