PRTF: Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility

Gibault's PRTF (Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility)  unit is designed to provide a secure, stable environment to youth who require 24-hour secure care. This program is suitable for youth who are not responding to lower levels of care. The PRTF unit is a locked living unit for clients who exhibit chronic behaviors that endanger themselves or others. This highly structured program is designed to help male's and female's ages 6-18 learn new living and social skills. Components of the program include individual, group and family counseling sessions. Counseling sessions shall be provided to each client at least three times a week with other sessions available as needed. Psychological and Psychiatric services are also available. Education opportunities will be provided by an education staff member assigned to the PRTF unit.

The PRTF unit will serve a maximum of 20 clients. The staff to client ratio is 1 to 4 during awake hours. Two mental health technicians will be present whenever one or more clients are present. The PRTF program was developed for youth who have affective disorders, ADD, oppositional defiance, conduct disorder, sexual/emotional/physical abuse, anxiety disorder and adjustment disorders.

A treatment plan for each client will be due within 10 working days. A monthly review will be written for each client in care to assess the need for a continued secure program. This written review will also be sent to the placing agency. The written monthly review will also include: the condition of the client; the incidents that indicate the client is gravely disabled or dangerous to self or others; an estimated time the client needs to remain in the program; and a review of the medical and physical status of the client.

PRTF Admission Criteria:

•               Exhibit chronic behaviors that endanger themselves or others
•               The individual's mental disorder is rated severe or the presence of tow or more diagnoses on Axes I and II indicate that the individual's disturbance is severe or complex. Mental disorder as classifies in the DSM-IV.
•               The individual's behavior has disrupted this placement in the family or in a group residence two or more times in the past year, or the individual has a persistent pattern of behavior that has severely disrupted life at home and school over the nine months preceding inpatient care. For children younger than 12yrs old, these time frames are six months for a family or group residence, and six months for home and school.
•               Family functioning or social relatedness is seriously impaired
•               The illness must be of a sub-acute or chronic nature where there has been failure of acute and/or emergency treatment to sufficiently ameliorate the condition to allow the patient to function in a lower level of care.