Home-Based Services

In-Home Services & Referral Guide for Parents

Reaching out for help is a hard first step. This guide explains your in-home service options, what to expect in treatment, and answers the questions parents ask most before making contact.

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Getting Started

Welcome & Overview

When choosing in-home support for your adolescent, understanding the depth, structure, and intensity of care is critical. At Lizotte Clinical, LLC, we offer two distinct tracks of in-home care designed to match the specific acuity and safety needs of your household: Standard In-Home Servcies and Specialized Intensive In-Home Services.

Service Tracks

Track Comparison: Standard vs. Specialized Services

1. Standard In-Home Stabilization Services

Best Suited For: Mild-to-moderate behavioral disruptions, internalizing presentations (anxiety, depression, school withdrawal), or routine family communication breakdowns where physical safety is not actively compromised.
Core Focus: Weekly individual/family counseling, coping skill development, emotional regulation, and standard school accommodation coordination.
Typical Timeline: 16-week structured step-down model (Updated from 3–4 months to align with standardized care phases).
Family Expectation: Caregivers manage daily behavioral expectations with regular coaching support from the clinician.

2. Specialized Intensive In-Home Services (High-Acuity Track)

Best Suited For: Severe externalizing behaviors, active runaway risks, youth safety extraction from gang/gun violence, Problem-Sexual Behavior (PSB), severe substance use disorders (SUD) requiring contingency management, or re-entry from juvenile incarceration.
Core Focus: Frontloaded in-home crisis response, rigorous environmental and digital containment, lethal means restriction, multi-system coordination (DHHS, probation/JCCO, schools), natural support coalition building, and parent-to-peer logistic alignment.
Typical Timeline: 5 to 6 months of intensive, highly structured in-home intervention phased across distinct clinical milestones (Updated to Legal/Justice total case count).
Family Expectation: Caregivers manage daily behavioral expectations with regular coaching support from the clinician.

Treatment Timeline

Phase-by-Phase Treatment Timelines for Specialized Services

Length of treatment is determined by a multitude of things such as: Caregiver and/or youth readiness for change / completion of assigned treatment homework / maintaining session frequency and intensity.

In-Home: 2 sessions; 4 hours weekly, average up to 3 months total treatment
In-Home SUD Visit: 2 sessions; 4 hours weekly, average up to 5 months total treatment
In-Home PSB: 2 in-person sessions, 1 Zoom; 6 hours weekly, average up to 7 months total treatment
In-Home Legal/Justice: 2–4 sessions weekly (frontloaded) + intensive legal & care coordination; average up to 5–8 months total treatment

1Onboarding, problem identification, home/community/school safety audit
- Intake and environmental risk assessment.
- Evaluation of safety hazards across home, school, and community settings.
- Rapid alliance-building with resistant or overwhelmed youth and caregivers.
2Understanding the family, natural/professional support systems
- Comprehensive mapping of existing stakeholder networks (DHHS, JCCOs, school teams).
- Identification of historical family strengths, triggers, and previous intervention bottlenecks.
- Assessment of natural support systems to anchor long-term placement stability.
3Goal setting and implementation / stakeholder collaboration / team building
- Establishing clear, measurable behavioral contracts and placement-saving objectives.
- Convening multi-agency alignment meetings to unify school, legal, and clinical goals.
- Frontloading intensive, high-frequency in-home sessions to immediately lower household tension.
4Assessment of goals and current progress / realign to treatment goals
- Reviewing objective safety milestones and incident reduction metrics.
- Realigning intervention strategies when behavioral patterns shift or escalate.
- Adjusting session frequency and de-escalation tactics based on real-time household data.
5Monitor for remaining behavior and positive outcomes, adjust as needed
- Tracking longitudinal stability and the family's independent crisis-resolution skills.
- Evaluating de-escalation autonomy and adherence to new household structures.
- Fine-tuning coping mechanics and relapse-prevention protocols.
6Discharge planning
- Discharge/transition mapping into routine outpatient therapy or other services as needed.
- Finalizing a sustainable, long-term family safety and crisis-response plan.
- Formalizing handoffs to community providers, schools, and natural supports.

Accountability

Therapist Accountability & Service Quality

Lizotte Clinical, LLC believes in total transparency and shared accountability. Throughout your work, your feedback matters. You will have access to the Clinician Accountability Rating Scale (scored on a 0 to 5 scale where 0 = Not applicable and 5 = Almost always) to regularly evaluate:

Responsiveness & Crisis Availability

Timely follow-up and calm real-time guidance during urgent windows.

Practical In-Home Utility

Real-world application of strategies avoiding "office-only" advice.

Parental Authority

Treating caregivers as the ultimate decision-makers in the household.

Team Advocacy

Reducing bureaucratic friction across schools, DHHS, and Juvenile Community Corrections.

Before You Refer

What to Know About Your Child's Behavior

It is important to know that the behavior your child is expressing is a combination of factors — related to community, school, friends, family, and their own symptoms. Rarely is any single cause the whole story. Understanding how these overlap helps me build a plan that treats the real picture, not just the surface behavior.

Community
Neighborhood, culture, access to resources, and exposure to stress or safety all shape how a teen copes and behaves.
School
Academic pressure, peer dynamics, teacher relationships, and a sense of belonging or exclusion carry into the home.
Friends
Peer influence is powerful in adolescence. Friendships, conflict, and social standing heavily affect mood and choices.
Family
Family history, routines, communication patterns, and recent changes or losses all play a role in a teen's behavior.
Their Own Symptoms
Underlying anxiety, depression, trauma, attention, or mood symptoms interact with everything else your child is facing.

Before Your Consultation

How to Prepare — and What I Ask of You

To get the best value for your time, I ask that you come to our first consultation prepared. Your engagement is the single most important factor in your child's progress.

Be Front and Center
Be ready to be front and center of treatment. You are the agent of change for your child. I will provide consultation and treatment, but sustainability starts with you.
Come With an Open Mind
Please come with an open mind about change. Growth asks all of us to consider new perspectives and try things differently than before.
A Holistic Approach
This is a holistic approach. We look at the whole picture — your child, your family, and the systems around them — not just a single behavior.
Be Prepared to Take Action
I need you to be prepared to take action. Lasting change happens between sessions, in the everyday choices and routines you carry forward at home.

What to Bring

Helpful Information to Have Prepared

The clearer the picture you can bring, the faster we can identify the pattern behind the behavior and shape the right approach for your child.

A Sequence of Events
Come prepared with an ongoing sequence of events as they occur. Tracking what happens, when, and around whom helps establish a pattern over time.
Finding the Pattern
I want to help you find the pattern behind the behavior. The correct approach is built from this information, so the more detail you can share, the clearer the picture becomes.
Expect Tough Questions
I'm going to ask tough questions at times. Please take them as a different perspective offered to help you and your child grow, not as judgment.
Both Voices Matter
I want to hear from you as a parent as well as from your child. Both perspectives are essential to understanding what's really happening.

Substance Use Treatment

What Parents Should Know About Substance Use Care

In Maine, minors under 18 can consent to treatment for alcohol or drug abuse without parental permission, and licensed counselors are not required to notify parents. Understanding this up front helps set realistic expectations for what family therapy can and cannot include.

A Minor's Right to Consent
Because your child can consent to substance use treatment on their own, some details of that care may stay between them and their counselor. This protection is designed to help young people seek help early.
Solving the Problem in Family Therapy
As a parent, you may already know a problem exists even if your child hasn't talked about it. You don't need every single detail to solve a problem, but you do need to understand where that problem comes from — and that is where our work together focuses.

My Commitments

What I Will Not Do

Being clear about my boundaries is part of building trust. There are certain things I will not do as part of treatment.

Affirming Who Your Child Is

I will not provide treatment intended to alter your child's viewpoint around sexuality or sexual identity. My work supports your child's wellbeing and growth — it is never used to change who they are.

Withholding Mandated Reports

I will not withhold information that I am required to report as a mandated reporter. This includes DHHS reportable events or an imminent risk of harm to self and others that requires law enforcement intervention.

Questions & Answers

Common Parent Questions

Tap any question to read more. If you don't see your question here, reach out and I'll walk you through it directly.

Ready to take the first step?

Every family's situation is different. Reach out for a confidential consultation and I'll help you figure out the right next step.

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