Crisis Services
Help when and where you need it, and a path forward
Crisis Services is a community-based system including first-response mental health, social work, psychiatric, and supportive services for children, adults, and families experiencing immediate mental health crises and/or long-term acute mental health challenges to provide triage care when needed and build pathways to long-term success.
The Northern Rivers Difference
Our crisis services are provided by a multidisciplinary team of highly-trained, compassionate professionals who provide trauma-informed, culturally-competent, person-centered care to help clients find success on their own terms. With the flexibility to deliver many services right in the community, we make it easy to access services. Our continuum of services means that we have the right level of service for many situations, and our strength as an organization means clients have access to an unmatched network of community resources.
Assertive Community Treatment
Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) is an intensive and highly integrated approach for community mental health service delivery serving adults whose symptoms of mental illness lead to serious functioning difficulties in several major areas of life, often including work, social relationships, residential independence, money management, and physical health and wellness. The ACT team is on call 24/7/365 to help with crises. We support recovery through an individualized, stigma-free approach that gives clients the tools to manage their recovery and set and reach meaningful goals.
Home-Based Crisis Intervention
Home-Based Crisis Intervention (HBCI) is an intensive 4- to 6-week in-home service available to families in Albany, Rensselaer (coming soon), Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren, and Washington counties. HBCI therapists are on call 24/7 to help families manage crisis and provide support. The program is committed to strengthening relationships while empowering and educating children and families to enhance problem-solving skills. The goal of the program is to maintain healthy family functioning in a safe environment.
Mobile Crisis Teams
Our multidisciplinary rapid-response teams are dispatched to homes, schools, and community locations to aid children and adults experiencing behavioral health crises over a 6-county area: Albany (children and adolescent services only), Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren, and Washington Counties. Our goal is to safely divert clients from emergency room visits or hospital placements and to help connect clients to community resources to chart a course to future success.
Short-Term Crisis Stabilization
Northern Rivers Family of Services offers short-term overnight therapeutic programs for youth ages 5–17 experiencing a period of acute stress, mental health issues, or psychiatric crisis that requires a 24/7 staff-secured (nonhospital) setting. These family-centered programs are designed to equip families and youth with a plan for success at home, in school, and in the community.
Healy House: Support for families that includes programming for children ages 5–12. We provide customized supervision, clinical support, nursing care, and tutoring, focusing on helping children stabilize through a consistent, nurturing structure combined with behavior modification. Our primary goal is to stabilize a crisis situation to prevent the unnecessary use of a hospital emergency room or hospital admission.
North Star: Support for families that includes programming for youth ages 12–17. Our primary goal is to stabilize a crisis situation to prevent the unnecessary use of a hospital emergency room or a hospital admission. As a youth’s crisis stabilizes, the program develops a plan of care to address underlying difficulties that led to the crisis, including making referrals for needed treatment supports and services for both the youth and the family.
Youth ACT (Assertive Community Treatment)
Youth ACT is an intensive and highly integrated approach for community mental health service delivery serving outpatient youth ages 10-21 in Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Warren, and Washington Counties whose symptoms of mental illness lead to serious functioning difficulties in several major areas of life, often including work, social relationships, residential independence, money management, and physical health and wellness.