Child and Family Institute at St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals

St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center is a two-sited voluntary hospital that serves as the provider of both primary and more specialized medical care for a socio-economically and ethnically diverse population of over 500,000 people. In addition, it is an academic medical center, with medical specialty and sub-specialty programs, health professional training programs, and a commitment to research.

The Child & Family Institute (Division of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry) reflects this orientation. The mission of the Division as a whole is to provide a full range of accessible, coordinated and clinically sophisticated child and adolescent psychiatric treatment programs, which meet the needs of a diverse community, while also maintaining state-of-the-art standards of treatment and quality assurance. These programs deliver a coordinated continuum of care including outpatient services, school-based day programs, home and community based services, blended case management services, as well as crisis and emergency intervention. In addition, the Division is committed to helping to assure the future of child and adolescent psychiatry, by producing well-trained, experienced and community-minded child and adolescent clinicians including psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, creative therapists and others through its training programs. The Division includes research activities in the treatment of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders, and outcomes research among other areas.

The Division serves individuals aged three to twenty-one, their families and individual adult family members in our program who require psychiatric services.

In each setting, the orientation is to provide rapid and accurate assessment and subsequent placement in an appropriate treatment program, with a comprehensive treatment plan, appropriate to the clinical, cultural and social characteristics of the patient and their families, consistent with standards of quality treatment.

Since potential patients might have their first contact with the Division in any number of settings, first-rate assessment skills are expected of staff in all locations to assure appropriate diagnosis and treatment planning. Further, programs endeavor to maintain or develop social supports for individuals to assist with school, family and community integration and reduce stigma that can result from having a psychiatric treatment history. Also, the interdisciplinary approach to treatment is encouraged, which is reflected in treatment planning, and is aimed at assuring that clinical objectives are well-articulated with social, education, medical, vocational, habilitation and other goals. The Division’s consultation/liaison services provide the same level of support and expertise to patients who are receiving care in other hospital pediatric units, including the HIV Center, the Pediatric Obesity Clinic and Pediatric Sickle Cell Program.

In sum, the Division embraces the hospital’s mission to provide outstanding health care, to provide the highest quality of education to health care professionals and to further research medical knowledge and develop medical excellence in health care delivery.