Behavioral health services for children and adolescents

In 2021, Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC) introduced newly expanded behavioral health services for children and adolescents covered by the CCHC Employee Health Plan. With a mental health crisis on the rise and the ongoing need for specialized behavioral health services, we want to remind our employees of the benefits and programs available to support and treat mental health and substance abuse disorders.

Services available under the CCHC Employee Health through Tufts Health Plan

If you have a child experiencing mental health issues, services and programs are available to help through your CCHC Employee Health Plan. Tufts Health Plan provides coverage for a variety of intermediate and outpatient services to treat child and adolescent behavioral health disorders. Services may include in-home therapy, in-home behavioral services, mobile crisis intervention, intensive care coordination and community based acute treatment. Please note that some of these services will need prior approval by Tufts Health Plan.

Tufts Health Plan’s Care Managers are available to help you navigate these services:

• Family support and training – provides services to a parent or other caretaker of a child and is provided where the child resides. This may include a skill building service called therapeutic mentoring designed to support age-appropriate functioning or improve deficits in social functioning resulting from their behavioral health diagnosis. Mobile crisis intervention – a short-term, mobile, onsite, face-to-face therapeutic response service that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to a child experiencing a behavioral health crisis. This service is used to identify, assess, treat, and stabilize the child and reduce the immediate risk of danger to the child or others (see more details on how to access this particular emergency service using a dedicated phone number as noted at the end of this communication titled “Massachusetts Emergency Services/Mobile Crisis Intervention Program.”)
• In-home behavioral services – includes a combination of behavior management therapy and behavior management monitoring that are available where the child resides.
• In-home therapy services – medically necessary therapeutic clinical intervention or ongoing training as well as therapeutic support. This intervention or support shall be provided where the child resides and includes a structured and consistent therapeutic relationship between a licensed clinician and a child and the child’s family to treat the child’s behavioral health needs.
• Community based acute treatment (CBAT) – mental health services provided in a staff-secure setting on a 24-hour basis with sufficient clinical staffing to ensure safety for the child or adolescent, while providing intensive therapeutic services including, but not limited to, services such daily medication monitoring, psychiatric assessment, and nursing.