• Enable children to be served primarily in their own homes and local communities.
• Provide intensive counseling and therapeutic assistance to children and families during periods of stress.
• Act as an advocate for families to assure that they receive necessary services to assist them in maintaining the health, social services, financial and educational support that will allow them to maintain their children at home.
• Provide extensive outreach services.
• Provide crisis intervention services for children.

The mental health programs include: Mentally Ill, Developmentally Disabled, Screening, Assessment, and Support Services, Unified Delinquency Intervention Services, Intensive Therapeutic Services, Urban Systems of Care, South Side Partners for Community Health, and Mentally Ill Substance Abusers.

Through the Mentally Ill program, in-home and out-patient counseling and therapy is provided to children and youth who are experiencing serious difficulty in interpersonal relationships, school functioning, family relations, or peer interactions. This is a long-term treatment service.

The Developmentally Disabled program, a long-term counseling, behavioral intervention, and support services program, is available to children who have behavioral and developmental disorders including developmentally delayed, physically impaired, and severe learning disorders, or adaptive problems.

The Screening, Assessment, and Support Services program provides comprehensive assessments to children at risk of psychiatric hospitalization due to severe emotional disturbance. Intensive family stabilization, referral, and community linkage services with 90 days of intensive intervention are provided. A 24-hour assessment capacity is also provided for children served in this program.

The Unified Delinquency Intervention Services program provides an intensive six-month counseling, advocacy, and supervision/monitoring service to adjudicated delinquent youth who are at risk for placement with the Illinois Department of Corrections.

A joint service with the Department of Children and Family Services, the Intensive Therapeutic Services program, enables children and youth placed in out-of-Cook County institutional placements to return to their families and the communities where they receive extensive therapeutic and support services.

A new family support program instituted in 1998, the Urban Systems of Care program, offers preventive mental health and community services to families residing in the Robert B. Taylor Homes. The program addresses issues faced by families coping with unemployment, social conditions, healthcare, housing, and general safety.