Helping families find their way forward.

Every parent wants to help their child thrive. But when your child or teen is facing significant emotional, behavioral or mental health challenges, getting the right support isn’t easy. You may be coordinating therapy appointments, communicating with teachers, navigating multiple providers — and trying to keep your family functioning through it all. Even with services in place, it can feel like you’re carrying the weight of everything on your own.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. Intensive Care Coordination (ICC) is a KVC Missouri program that is designed to unite all the moving parts into one coordinated, family-centered plan. ICC is ideal for families whose needs extend beyond traditional services by bringing together providers, community resources and the family’s own strengths into one coordinated plan. Rather than adding another appointment to your calendar, ICC helps ensure everyone is working toward the same goals so your family can move from managing crises to building long-term stability and hope.

When is Support Beyond Traditional Services Needed?

Families that benefit from ICC often feel that the level of support their family needs has outgrown what you’re trying to manage alone. Every family faces challenging seasons, and asking for additional support doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. 

Sometimes a child’s emotional, behavioral or mental health needs become more complex than one service or one caregiver can reasonably manage alone. ICC, as a unique approach, is designed for children and teens whose emotional or behavioral challenges affect multiple areas of life and whose families need someone to help coordinate care and navigate available supports. 

Is ICC right for your family? If any of the situations below sound familiar, Intensive Care Coordination may be able to help your family find a clearer path forward.

Struggles are Impacting Daily Life 

You sometimes feel like you can’t catch a break. Your child or teen is often triggered, on edge or exhibiting behaviors that you don’t know how to deal with. These challenges are impacting their wellbeing, whether they’re in the classroom or at home, and you feel like you’re constantly putting out fires just to get by. You need a lifeline for mental health support and have run out of places to turn.

You Need More Support Too

Caring for a child with complex needs can be emotionally and physically demanding. Even if your child is receiving services, you may feel unsure where to turn with your own questions or how to coordinate everything. Every caregiver deserves support, too.

The Current Services Aren’t Working

Your child or teen is actively receiving plenty of professional support, but it doesn’t seem to be making a difference. Their behavioral or emotional challenges continue to persist no matter what you try. They may even be working with multiple providers or agencies, making it difficult to coordinate it all and keep the whole team on the same page with the treatment plan.

You’re Afraid to Ask for Help

You may feel like you’re drowning. But there’s a lot of strength in asking for a lifeline! Reaching out for help means you are a parent or caregiver who truly wants the best for your child or teen. It shows you will do whatever it takes to help them.

What is Intensive Care Coordination?

Intensive Care Coordination (ICC) fills in the gaps where multiple services and agencies can create overwhelm. The ICC program provides wraparound services for youth and their families struggling with complex emotional, mental and behavioral needs. 

Using a team-based planning and problem-solving approach, a dedicated Wraparound Facilitator leads your family through a goal-setting process to help them identify their strengths and needs before creating a plan to best meet those needs, whether through peer support or connection to community resources.

We listen to the concerns of the youth and families we work with and let them take the lead on their care plan, including choosing their goals and service needs. ICC services typically last six months, with weekly meetings curated specifically to your family’s goals and needs.

Practically, ICC services include:

• Coordination among providers
• Facilitation of meetings
• Helping families create goals
• Advocating within schools and among educators
• Connecting families to community resources
• Helping monitor progress

What Makes ICC Unique?

While many individual services focus on a specific area, like therapy for a child with mental health difficulties or medication management for behavioral challenges, ICC is a whole-family approach that empowers your voice to drive decisions. ICC gives you someone in your corner whose purpose is ensuring everyone is working toward the same goals for long-term success, rather than managing a singular moment of crisis.

Instead of receiving services in an office, Wraparound Facilitators meet you where you are and help you connect with services and supports right where your family lives and learns. ICC’s focus is: “What strengths does your family already have, and how can we build on them?”

What to Expect with ICC

Once you begin Intensive Care Coordination, you’ll partner with a dedicated Wraparound Facilitator who takes the time to understand your family’s strengths, goals and unique needs. Together, you’ll create a personalized plan, coordinate the people and services involved in your child’s care and connect with additional resources as needed. 

Worried this is one more thing for your to-do list? It’s not. The goal of ICC isn’t to give you one more appointment. It’s to help simplify what can feel overwhelming by bringing everyone together around a shared plan — so you don’t have to coordinate everything on your own. 

Throughout the process, your family remains at the center of every decision, with ongoing support to help you navigate challenges and celebrate progress along the way.

How ICC Helps Families Thrive

Because the goal of ICC is to help families find long-term solutions that are realistic and sustainable for everyone involved, our hope is that families will leave the program feeling empowered to thrive together. What can it look like for your family when you finish ICC?

You Understand the Supports Available to You

You know not only where to find resources for support, but you also are confident advocating for yourself and your child or teen to build lasting support networks within your community. When times get tough, you know who to ask for help to keep your child safe.

Your Family Feels Stronger Together

Stability at home now feels real and achievable. You’re no longer afraid of what the stress of your situation could do to your family, because you know where to go for help before it becomes a crisis that requires residential treatment or foster care intervention. Your individual family relationships are stronger as you have grown in your understanding of one another’s strengths and needs.

Improved Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing for Everyone

Your child is thriving — but so are you, as well as your partner and other children in your home. Through stability, stronger relationships and feeling empowered to make a change for the better, mental health and emotional wellbeing are on an upward trajectory for everyone.

Who Can Receive ICC?

Intensive Care Coordination through KVC Missouri is available to families who meet the following criteria:

• Live in Jackson County
• Have a youth ages 0-17
• Have a youth facing serious challenges affecting multiple areas of life
• At risk of involvement with multiple agencies

Taking the First Step

At KVC, we believe we all need connection — and that’s the heart of ICC. If you think Intensive Care Coordination may be right for you and your family, fill out this referral form or learn more about the program here. From the moment you reach out to us, you’ll have a caring team walking beside you every step of the way.