This is a model of mental health service delivery that provides a structured Monday through Friday program for your child to attend 6 hours per day.  The goal of the program is intensive skills building over a 6-12 week period for both your child and your family, and will require your active participation in treatment and your child’s regular attendance.  Programs run year round, and during the school year, educational enhancement will be provided by a local public school district, but the goal of the program is stabilization of mental health symptoms across home and community settings.

Many of our clients present with serious symptoms of depression, anxiety, or managing anger/frustration that are impacting success in school, at home, and in the community.   We can help clients with trauma or psychosis manage those symptoms as long as they are not presenting with imminent risk to themselves or others.  Children are generally receiving active outpatient mental health services and still struggling with managing their symptoms at home, school, and in the community, and require a more intensive level of intervention than weekly outpatient appointments can provide.  We do not specialize in eating disorders or sexually inappropriate behaviors, and we encourage you to seek a specialist in those types of issues.   We do not have nursing supports available during the program day, so some children with serious medical challenges may not be appropriate for the program.  Our Access department will be happy to talk through your child’s needs to help make the decision to apply for services.

Trillium has five partial hospitalization/day treatment sites across Oregon – in Portland, Salem, Corvallis, The Dalles, and Bend.  Most children will live in or very near one of those cities, but on occasion children will come to program from as much as an hour away – this will depend on assessment of a child’s ability to safely cope with a lengthy bus ride.

Your child’s school district is required to transport your child back and forth from your home (or daycare site) to program each day.  Each program will work with your school district to set up that transport in the days prior to admission.  That said: each school district is faced with it’s own challenges in arranging a transport route for your child that doesn’t negatively impact the transport of other children in the district.  At times we will see delays in transport getting started due to lack of available bus drivers, or lengthier than normal transport times if multiple children on the bus need to be dropped off at a number of different sites – this is unfortunately outside Trillium’s control.  Our transition specialist will attempt to assist in obtaining alternate transport if possible, or you may be asked to transport your child for a period of time.

Your child will be assigned a therapist and psychiatric medication manager as they admit to program and will temporarily  stop seeing providers you may already have in the community.  Throughout the 5 days per week of program, your child will receive individual, group, and family therapies, and either a psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner who will work with you around any medication needs/goals.  In addition, a Transition Specialist will work with your school district and outpatient providers to warmly transition your child into services, and then help arrange return to outpatient services and your public school when treatment is completed.

In general, referrals come from your current treating outpatient providers.  In some cases a primary care physician or school will have completed the necessary clinical assessments to indicate appropriateness for this high level of mental health intervention.  Our Access team is happy to talk this through with you and help guide how to make the necessary requests for clinical information.