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Assessment of Community Needs and Project Objectives
Access to mental healthcare, particularly for children
The Southern Tier Primary Care Project of the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency has identified access to adult and pediatric mental health services as a major problem. Chemung County's Child and Family Health and Wellness Consolidated Plan Committee has also identified mental health services to children as a priority concern.
In the area of pediatric mental healthcare, the problem appears to be the lack of available resources to serve children and adolescents before problems become acute. This only leads ot a further problem because of the insufficient supply of adolescent psychiatric beds. Area medical centers and hospitals reports an all-too-frequent problem with three day stays before an available adolescent psychiatric bed can be located and secured.
Most tragically, those involved in delivery of care to children not the increasing number of children who are potentially homicidal or suicidal at ever younger ages.
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