ABSTRACT
Developing community-based systems of child mental health care is now seen as a national priority, and communities across the country are working toward establishing such systems (Stroul & Friedman, 1986). The “system of care” philosophy is built around the concept of individualizing services. Implementing a program of individualized care requires an ecological approach. To think ecologically is to concentrate on the interrelationships between all levels that comprise an organism and its environment. In the case of a child, this means the child-as-individual (e.g., biological, intrapsychic, cognitive factors), as well as intra-and extrafamilial, peer, school, neighborhood, community, and overarching institutional factors. An effective individualized program must begin with a comprehensive, needs-based assessment-one that examines all domains in the child’s environment to discover the social ecology of the child’s behavior (Burchard & Clarke, 1990).
