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To better meet the needs of Collier County families, the David Lawrence Centers has recently started the expansion of Children’s Outpatient Services. With the recent reallocation of resources due to the transition from residential to outpatient care, the Center is now poised to treat more children then ever before. Due to the Center’s sliding fee scale and affordable treatment services and because the Center is the only local Medicaid provider for these types of services, children and their families will have increased access to the Center’s children’s services continuum which includes medical services, individual, group and family therapy, case management, therapeutic behavioral onsite services, parenting classes, and substance use prevention, intervention and treatment services.

The first phase of this expansion began with the recent addition of two new Child and Adolescent Staff Psychiatrists, Dr. De Lima and Dr. Spielman. This allows us to meet the growing demand for children’s services at David Lawrence Centers. A comprehensive marketing plan to promote these expanded psychiatric medical services has already begun and includes press releases, advertisements, mailings to referring physicians and therapists and outreach efforts to our collaborative community partners. The Center has already seen a great response from the community and a significant increase in the number of children being served.

In July, all Children’s Outpatient Services will be moved to a newly renovated space on the main campus off of Golden Gate Parkway. This move will eliminate the need to expand facility space designated for children’s services. The resources saved from this transition will be allocated for further children’s services program development and will support critical, core programs such as the Children’s Crisis Stabilization Unit which is facing some difficult legislative budget cuts in the coming years.

Further children’s services program development will continue over the next few months. We would like to establish play therapy and a more comprehensive parenting program with the potential for a laboratory for parental coaching. The Center would also like to develop expertise in the autism field as many autistic children have co-occurring mental health and behavioral issues and there is currently a need for this service. Currently, the Center is conducting research, assessing the need for these services with our community partners and doing a feasibility analysis for the funding of such services in order to determine the direction of these program development concepts.

Our goal for the children’s services expansion is to:

improve access to care
respond to local community needs consistent with our mission
meet the demand for psychiatric medical services
be an efficient and responsive referral source for pediatricians, mental health professionals, Collier Health Services, the Collier County School System, other collaborative, not-for-profit providers and the general public
increase supportive parenting services and children’s behavior management services to increase the child’s success
develop early childhood mental health programming to include prevention and education services for parents

The Center is very excited about this increased capacity to serve the needs of children and their families in Collier County. Stay tuned for more announcements about our direction for children’s services and thank you for your continued support of these important initiatives.