Register Here
2025 Fall SAP Consortium
October 20, 2025 | 1 PM - 2 PM | Virtual Program
Topic: Child and Adolescent Social Service Program (CASSP)
Guest Speakers from Lehigh County Integrated Services:
Michael Faulkner (Judge)
Ryan Lynn (Mental Health Program Specialist)
Mary McGonigle (MSW, LSW Lehigh County Integrated Services Director)
Gwen Millets (MSW Lehigh County Integrated Services Program Specialist)
Guest Speaker from Northampton County CASSP:
Jessica Makowski (CASSP Coordinator)
One common concern for schools and their SAP Teams is attendance. How do we handle this? CASSP can help! Before issues with students get out of control. CASSP can help. The CASSP team provides support to children, their families and the systems that ae involved with the child. The CASSP team goal is to help children gain access to both formal and informal supports to be successful.
For more than 20 years, the children’s behavioral health system in Pennsylvania has been guided by the CASSP philosophy. A comprehensive system of care for children and adolescents with serious emotional disorders and their families. The approach of care ensures that services and treatment for children and adolescents with or at risk of serious emotional disorders are planned collaboratively with the family and all agencies involved in the child’s or adolescent’s life. Partnerships are critical to the success of any system of care.
Current behavioral health services (mental health and drug and alcohol) for children and adolescents could include the following based on medical necessity:
- Case management services, including intensive case management and resource coordination
- Outpatient therapy
- Intensive outpatient
- School-based behavioral health services
Behavioral health rehabilitation services (behavioral specialist consultant, mobile therapy, and therapeutic staff support; summer therapeutic staff support; individualized program exception services; and evidence-based services such as multisystemic therapy and functional family therapy):
- Partial hospitalization services
- Family-Based Mental Health Services
- Residential treatment facilities (some also provide various drug and alcohol services based on licensure)
- Inpatient hospitalization
- Prevention/intervention services
- Crisis intervention and emergency services
- Early intervention
- Early childhood mental health consultation
- Family support services
CASSP is:
- Child-centered
- Family-focused
- Community based
- Culturally competent
- Multi-system - Services are planned in collaboration with all the child-serving systems involved in the child's life. Representatives from all these systems and the family collaborate to define the goals for the child, develop a service plan, develop the necessary resources to implement the plan, provide appropriate support to the child and family, and evaluate progress.
- Least restrictive/least intrusive - Services take place in settings that are the most appropriate and natural for the child and family and are the least restrictive to meet the needs of the child and family.
