Children's Intensive Emotional and Behavioral Services
Children's Intensive Emotional and Behavioral Services (CIEBS) provides comprehensive psychiatric partial hospitalization services in a trauma-informed, behaviorally based therapeutic setting to children in the Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean Counties of New Jersey. The program is for children between the ages of 5 and 13 who have significant emotional, behavioral and social needs.
Children are referred to us by schools, pediatricians, the mental health community, child protective services and parents. Our patients have a variety of behavioral, emotional and social needs that are significantly impacting the child’s ability to learn and participate constructively in their home, school or community.
CIEBS offers two separate but integrated psychiatric programs.
- Children’s Intensive Emotional and Behavioral Services, a full-day psychiatric program that runs six hours a day (9 a.m.-3 p.m.), five days a week. The program is available for children age 5 to 13.
- The Children’s Extended Day Hospital Program, an extended-day psychiatric program that runs 4½ hours a day (3-7:30 p.m.), two to four days a week. The program is available for children age 8 to 13.
Depending on your child’s need and age, he or she may be able to attend either program or both in succession for two to six months. The programs are designed to meet the varying needs of each child and family.
Who we serve
Children's Intensive Emotional and Behavioral Services is open to children age 5 to 13, who live in Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties in New Jersey.
Children in this program may have a history of being rejected, expelled or excluded from schools and other community programs because their behavioral challenges have made it difficult for them to participate. They likely present with a combination of psychiatric symptoms and severe impairment of functioning in the home, school and/or community, and may be considered at-risk for being hospitalized, expelled from school or placed in more restrictive settings, such as residential placement.
Children who attend our programs may also have a history of:
- Prenatal/perinatal complications
- Developmental delays
- Prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol
- Neglect, abuse, and trauma
Trauma-informed care recognizes and responds to these experiences and creates a safe place for the children to learn new behaviors.
Our services
- Thorough screening and evaluation
- Psychiatric evaluation, consultation and medication monitoring
- Expressive therapy groups
- Family therapy
- Individual therapy tailored to the child’s/family’s needs, as needed
- Psychoeducational groups
- Simulated classroom setting and activities
- High level of supervision and safety for aggressive and combative behaviors
- Case management/care coordination
- Creative therapies
- Daily living skills and health training
- Daily recreational therapy
- Referral to — and consultation with — community resources
- Psychoeducation/psychotherapy group for parents of current and former patients
- Transitional discharge planning
- Transportation is provided for children based on distance from the child’s residence to the CHOP Specialty Care Center in Mays Landing, NJ. Alternative transportation can be discussed.
Our philosophy and treatment
Our team includes psychiatrists, physicians, mental health therapists, nurses and other behavioral health professionals. We work together to provide comprehensive evaluations and individualized treatment to each child. Our approach to care incorporates the child, family and community and our goal is to return children to their school and community.
When children enter one of our partial hospital programs, they are placed in developmentally appropriate treatment rooms that become the setting for their therapy. Within this safe, predictable, and therapeutic environment, children receive trauma-informed, behaviorally focused, individualized treatment that encourages family and community participation.
Treatment focuses on teaching children how to develop safe adaptive behaviors, emotional self-regulation and pro-social skills as building blocks that will improve their academic learning potential. Interventions are designed to help them reach their behavioral, emotional, social and learning potential.
Therapeutic interventions stress safety and the acceptance and respect of others, as they are, without judgment or evaluation (also called “unconditional positive regard”). These techniques are derived humanistic principals, state-of-the-art behavior modification techniques and applied behavior analysis. Children are further supported by individual, group and family psychotherapy, simulated classroom activities, and, if needed, medication.
The weaving together of these interventions — under the guidance of the treatment team in a setting similar to a school classroom — creates the therapeutic environment.