In 1986, Beth Stroul and Robert Friedman published a monograph titled A System of Care for Severely Emotionally Disturbed Children and Youth, in which they described a system of care as a comprehensive spectrum of mental health and other necessary services organized into a coordinated network to meet the multiple and changing needs of severely emotionally disturbed children and adolescents. The system of care approach is built on a set of values and principles that guide the nature and provision of services to [Page 1556]children with severe emotional disturbances and their families. The array of services within such a system is depicted in Figure 1, and the values and principles are presented in Table 1.

Figure 1 ...