ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Youth Crisis Services, a program designed to specifically serve the status offender. Youth Crisis Services was launched as a joint venture between the Children's Home Society of California and mental health and probation departments in four northern California counties. Many referrals to Youth Crisis Services are adolescents who have run away from home. Because of its rural setting, Youth Crisis Services first encounters clients when problems are severe. In Youth Crisis Services' group homes; token systems are tools for helping adolescents become responsible. Contracts are part of most interventions in Youth Crisis Services group homes. Working with families having an adolescent in crisis demands immediate intervention. Initial intervention, halting additional problems, may do little to repair long-standing patterns of family intervention. Youth Crisis Services was designed to fill a service gap and saw little need for program evaluation. Probation departments in counties served by Youth Crisis Services have been extremely supportive.
