For purposes of this chapter, the following terms shall have the following meanings:

(a) (1) “Residentially based services” means behavioral or therapeutic interventions delivered in nondetention group care settings in which multiple children or youth live in the same housing unit and receive care and supervision from paid staff. Residentially based services are most effectively used as intensive, short-term interventions when children have unmet needs that create conditions that render them or those around them unsafe, or that prevent the effective delivery of needed services and supports provided in the children’s own homes or in other family settings, such as with a relative, guardian, foster family, or adoptive family.

(2) “Residentially based services” shall include the following interventions and services:

(A) Environmental interventions that establish a safe, stable, and structured living situation in which children or youth can receive the comfort, attention, structure, and guidance needed to help them reduce the intensity of conditions that led to their placement in the program, so that their caregivers can identify and address the factors creating those conditions.

(B) Intensive treatment interventions that facilitate the rapid movement of children or youth toward connection or reconnection with appropriate and natural home, school, and community ecologies, by helping them and their families find ways to mitigate the conditions that led to their placement in the program with positive and productive alternatives.

(C) Parallel, predischarge, community-based interventions that help family members and other people in the social ecologies that children and youth will be joining or rejoining, to prepare for connection or reconnection. These preparations should be initiated upon placement and proceed apace with the environmental interventions being provided within the residential setting.

(D) Followup postdischarge support and services, consistent with the child’s case plan, provided as needed after children or youth have exited the residential component and returned to their own family or to another family living situation, in order to ensure the stability and success of the connection or reconnection with home, school, and community.

(b) “County” means a county that enters into a voluntary agreement with a private nonprofit agency to test alternative program designs and funding models pursuant to this chapter, and may include a consortia or consortium of counties.

(Added by Stats. 2007, Ch. 466, Sec. 2. Effective January 1, 2008.)