In recognition of the need to expand psychiatric and behavioral health services in the areas Children’s Hospital serves, CHOP entered into new partnerships, enhanced our services and ramped up the training of the next generation of pediatric psychologists and psychiatrists.

CHOP increased access to integrated behavioral health services to children and families at the CHOP Care Network Cobbs Creek Primary Care location, thanks to an expanded psychology internship program. Psychologists saw children during their well and sick child visits for concerns related to disruptive behavior, ADHD, sleep disturbances, toileting and feeding problems, school concerns, depression, and anxiety.

Psychology interns saw an average of 50 patients a month. CHOP psychologists provided brief, evidence-based follow-up, as well as referrals to community-based behavioral health providers. Focus groups revealed that providers considered the service to be useful in improving patient access to high-quality behavioral healthcare and allowed them to improve their ability to meet patient needs.

Through a partnership with the Children’s Crisis Treatment Center, CHOP fellows in psychiatry treat very young children whose development has been impacted by biological or environmental traumas that place them at risk. Fellows move on to the Consortium Community Mental Health Center, which allows them the opportunity to work with patients with mental illness in West and Southwest Philadelphia. They learn to address these problems within community systems of care that serve the chronic and severely mentally ill and their families. Under the supervision of highly experienced child psychiatrists, fellows provide compassionate, appropriate and effective care.

Melmark, in Berwyn, has been a community resource for individuals with intellectual disabilities, autism, brain injuries, and other neurological and genetic diagnoses for nearly 50 years. CHOP's Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences has had the opportunity to partner with Melmark on many events over the past year and was honored to receive the Community Partner of the Year award on behalf of CHOP in 2015.