Family Stabilization Team Services

Arbour Health System’s Family Stabilization Team (FST) Services offer intensive home-based, short-term, flexible crisis stabilization for children and their parents or foster parents following a psychiatric episode requiring acute mental health treatment.  The goal of the program is to assist children and their families to address life stressors through the provision of intensive, short-term transitional services in the home.  The FST has provided this service over the years to hundreds of families in eastern Massachusetts.  The intents of the program are to serve the patient in the least restrictive environment, to decrease reliance on inpatient care, and to reduce inpatient length of stay.  The service is flexible contingent upon the needs of patients and their families.

The FST’s ability to respond rapidly with comprehensive, multidisciplinary and individual intervention can effectively reduce the need for placement and increases the probability of family preservation.  All treatment is custom-designed to actively include the child/adolescent, family, extended family, professionals and community-based supports in the treatment process.  This strengthens those services already in place without removing the child from the supports offered by his or her family and community.