LUK DCF Support & Stabilization Services
Please note: the following programs are intended for DCF referrals only. For non-DCF referrals and clients, please contact LUK’s Central Referral team for help finding the service that is right for you.
LUK Crisis Center, Inc. (LUK) is a multifaceted social service agency dedicated to improving the safety, stability, and emotional well-being of youth, adults, and families. LUK was established as an all-volunteer 24-hour hotline in 1970 by two VISTA members to respond to unmet needs in Fitchburg. LUK has diversified since that time, expanding throughout all of Central MA with a broad spectrum of community-based programs. Our agency is built on a foundation of listening, flexibility, and centering the needs of our community, and we strive to create communities where all people are safe, healthy, and resilient.
We are based in Fitchburg, MA and have additional locations in Worcester, Webster, and Boylston.
LUK Central Referral Team Contact Info: 800-711-4585 or Referrals@LUK.org
Click to download the Printable LUK DCF S&S Services Overview Flyer.
Safe & Stable
Rate: Hourly
LUK’s Family Support Partner connects with caregivers facing complex challenges, helping them navigate obstacles and access essential resources, while promoting the safety, permanency, and well-being of their children. Their role includes individualized assessments, in-home and community-based services, and collaboration with other providers.
This service is designed to enhance caregiver capacity and sustainability. Utilizing trauma-informed approaches, elements of the Nurturing program model, Wraparound principles, and Motivational Interviewing, Family Support Partners foster resilience in families, meeting them where they are and providing flexible, empathetic support tailored to their unique needs.
Target Population: Caregivers facing complex challenges who need additional support
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Comprehensive Services
Rate: Daily
LUK’s Promoting Youth and Family Solutions (PYFS) is a family stabilization service intended to offer intensive in-home family therapy and individual youth support. This short-term program includes assessment, psycho-education, family stabilization, treatment and support, and service referral and linkage to community supports. Parent coaching/family support partners and behavioral analysis services are also available as part of PYFS.
The service varies in intensity as needed and desired by the family. The team consists of a clinician and an outreach worker, with at least one session a week.
Target Population: Youth and families struggling with complex mental health and behavioral challenges who are at risk for out-of-home placement, and reunifying families.
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Rate: Daily
LUK’s Intensive Promoting Youth and Family Solutions (I-PYFS) is a family stabilization service intended to offer more intensive in-home family therapy and individual youth support. This short-term program includes the same benefits as PYFS, but includes a larger initial team.
The team for this service consists of master’s level clinicians, outreach staff, family partners, and/or peer mentors. It also involves at least three sessions per week.
Target Population: Youth and families struggling with complex mental health and behavioral challenges who are at risk for out-of-home placement, and reunifying families.
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Rate: Daily
LUK’s Comprehensive Family Services (CFS) is an intensive home and community based service that is designed to help youth and families that are struggling with complex mental health and behavioral challenges and are at high-risk for out-of-home placement.
This intensive program includes a wide range of services, such as psycho-education, family and individual therapy, youth and family support, skill building, peer mentoring, rehabilitative and recovery services, support during youth placement, psychiatry consults, occupational therapy consults, and behavior management.
Target Population: Youth and families struggling with complex mental health and behavioral challenges who are at high-risk for out-of-home placement, and reunifying families.
Average Involvement Length: 120 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Rate: Daily
LUK’s CFS with Specialty includes the same benefits as CFS, but with additional team members who specialize in working with youth and adults with disabilities.
Target Population: Families who meet the target of CFS and have at least one family member with a disability.
Average Involvement Length: 120 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Substance Use Interventions
Rate: Daily
Intensive Family Navigation for Caregivers (IFN-C) provides a flexible, responsive, and comprehensive approach to supporting caregivers who are struggling with substance use and need assistance to keep their children safe at home.
IFN-C utilizes a variety of interventions, including Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT); Motivational Interviewing (MI); and/or Multidimensional Family Recovery (MDFR). It includes a continuum of assessment, intensive case management, clinical, and psycho-educational services.
Services are designed to be client- and family-driven, strengths-based, community-centered, and provided in a culturally- and linguistically-responsive manner to meet the needs of each family as they learn skills, build upon their own strengths, and improve their relationships to reduce or eliminate substance use and associated harms.
Target Population: Families with Parent/Caregiver Substance Use
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Rate: Daily
Intensive Family Navigation for Youth (IFN-Y) provides a flexible, responsive, and comprehensive approach to support adolescents who use or are at high risk of using substances, including those not quite ready to connect with treatment.
We utilize a variety of approaches and interventions, including evidence-based models such as Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT); Motivational Interviewing (MI); and/or Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA). IFN-Y includes a continuum of assessment, intensive case management, clinical, and psycho-educational services.
Services are designed to meet the needs of each youth and family as they learn skills, build upon their own strengths, and improve their relationships to reduce or eliminate substance use and associated harms.
Target Population: Families with Youth Substance Use
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
EBP (Evidence-based Practices)
Rate: Daily, Authorized at Evidence-Based Multisystemic Therapy® (EBP-MST) Service Model Rate
LUK’s Family Coaching using Parent-Child Interactive Therapy (PCIT) uses a team approach to address problematic caregiver-child interaction patterns using psychoeducation related to specific skills, modeling, and active coaching. Caregivers are guided in real time by a PCIT-trained clinician to use child-directed interaction (CDI) skills and increase positive attention to the child. This is conducted through a one-way mirror within a specialized clinic space at the LUK office, or through a “bug-in-the-ear” headphone/verbal coaching communication system for home-based treatment.
The clinician will carry out clinical treatment goals, a case manager will help the family reach identified goals, and a family coach will, as needed, bolster supports for the caregiver as they work closely with their clinician.
Target Population: Caregivers, and their children ages 2-7
Average Involvement Length: 120 Days
Family Crisis/Trauma Intervention
Rate: Daily
LUK’s Trauma Response Team serves as a short-term family crisis/trauma intervention to aid families in immediate stabilization and strengthening the capacity of caregiving systems amidst a significant stressor. Services are family-driven in order to tailor approaches to their unique needs, strengths, and preferences.
The Trauma Response Team uses an in-person team approach (with capacity for telehealth if the family prefers) to address clinical and non-clinical needs as soon as possible after the occurrence of a crisis/trauma. The intended outcome of the service includes immediate stabilization, crisis and safety planning, and linkages to ongoing services where applicable.
LUK utilizes the Four Rs (Realization, Recognition, Response, and Resistance to re-traumatization) from SAMHSA, Psychological First Aid (PFA), and other evidenced-based models such as Attachment, Regulation and Competency (ARC) and Motivational Interviewing (MI) to screen, assess, and support immediate safety and stabilization; intervene with trauma-informed responses; and initiate referrals to address a families’ individualized circumstances.
Target Population: Families in need of immediate stabilization
Average Involvement Length: 20 days
Includes Motivational Interviewing (MI)
Caregiver Respite
Rate: Hourly
The Hourly Respite program provides one-to-one and group respite services for youth and their families. LUK’s Hourly Respite services are responsive to the needs of families; are reliable and flexible; and strengthen families, children, and youth.
Hourly Respite can be home-based or community-based and can be an essential part of the overall support that families may need to keep their child at home. Services may be used to support a placement, to prevent out of home placement and to provide short, planned breaks for overwhelmed and overstressed caregivers.
Target Population: Caregivers, and their children ages 0-17
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Preparation Support
Rate: Hourly
LUK’s Peer Support Specialist program is designed to assist caregivers with preparing themselves, their homes, and their social networks prior to a child entering or returning to their family, similar to our work with foster/resource families. We define family broadly to include biological family, foster family, and family of creation.
The Peer Support Specialists are “experts by experience,” with lived experience in foster care, either as a foster youth, foster parent or foster sibling, highly skilled in communication, with the ability to listen actively, and utilize an empathetic problem-solving approach. They possess exceptional conflict resolution and decision-making skills and support families with building social connections.
Target Population: Parents/Caregivers preparing for youth to enter or return to their home
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Rate: Hourly
LUK has been providing Family Time services since 2014. Staff use a trauma-informed, child-centered/family-focused lens, and have adopted the Beyer Visit Coaching model. Family Time is a service for families involved with DCF and works to maintain connections for children and their families. This program offers supervised visits for non-custodial parents and helps ensure the physical safety of the child while preserving family relationships with non-offending individuals.
Visits can be community-based, or at a LUK or DCF office. Additionally, visits can be scheduled in community-based locations (library, park, restaurant, bodega) to work on caregiving skills in community settings. Family time is conducted using a trauma-informed lens, child centered, and designed to create a reliable, predictable and safe space for the family to remain connected.
Target Population: DCF-involved families with out-of-home placements
Average Involvement Length: 90 Days
Youth Support
Rate: Hourly, Authorized at Youth Support – Enrichment (YS-Enr) Model Rate
TREK provides community-based Adventure programming during after-school and out-of-school times. TREK groups include youth who are at similar ages and developmental levels, as well as inclusive groups. TREK is a therapeutic AB/EL program designed to help clients get outside, experience nature, and challenge themselves with new adventures.
The afterschool programs generally run for 11-13 weeks, while the summer programming is 7-8 weeks. Each cycle of programming provides 80-100 hours of nature-assisted, experiential learning programming.
TREK-Synergy for Neurodivergent youth has shown to improve reciprocity, increase emotional regulation and ability to navigate social landscapes, and help youth maintain gains during school breaks.
TREK staff work with the treatment team to implement behavioral strategies during program, and the Case Manager (CM) helps to weave these together in the three domains of home, community, and school. TREK Activities include (but are not limited to) hiking, rock climbing, high/low challenge course, kayaking/canoeing, camping and more.
Target Population: Youth ages 7-17
Average Involvement Length: 85 Hours
Rate: Hourly, Authorized at Youth Support – Disabilities (YS-Dis) Model Rate
TREK-CAT is a community-based Adventure Therapy program that specifically serves children, youth, and young adults who have been impacted by, or are struggling with behavioral health conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, mood disorders, body dysmorphic dysphoria, eating disordered behavior, PTSD), including substance use/misuse (at the intervention or treatment level of care). TREK-CAT can provide specialized cycles for Neurodivergent youth who may also have a co-occurring behavioral health disorder.
Programming is intended to treat behavioral challenges that put youth at risk for out-of-home placement or placement instability/disruption. Whenever appropriate or indicated, the parent/caregiver will be involved with a focus on training and supporting the caregiver to care for the youth in the home.
Target Population: Youth ages 10-23 facing behavioral challenges, and their parent/caregiver (when appropriate)
Average Involvement Length: 150 hours
Rate: Daily
The focus of the Next Step Program is to support the safety, stability, permanency, well-being, and self-sufficiency of YYA, ages 17-23, of any gender identity, including pregnant and/or parenting YYA, referred by DCF. Service delivery will center on supporting YYA’s personal development, home-based and community-based skills, economic stability, and the development of positive social networks.
Our proposed model includes these four primary steps: (1) assessment/engagement, (2) action planning, (3) monitoring progress, and (4) ongoing support. Staff will utilize the Youth Readiness Assessment Tool (YRAT), engaging with the YYA as well as their existing supports to get a broad view of current functioning.
Target Population: Youth and Young Adults ages 17-23
Average Involvement Length: 120 Days
Rate: Daily
LUK’s Transition to Work (TTW) Program will provide services and support to youth and young adults (YYA) transitioning to adulthood, including career exploration, pre-employability skills assessment, training, and subsidized employment placement.
LUK’s subsidized employment placement involves a relationship between an employer, a young person, and LUK. For a defined, temporary period of time, LUK pays the young person’s wages while they are trained and working for an employer. At the end of the period of time, the employer may hire the young person and/or take on another young person receiving subsidized employment. The focus of TTW is to support the vocational success of YYA ages 17-23.
Target Population: Youth and Young Adults ages 17-23
Average Involvement Length: 180 Days
Assessments
Rate: Hourly
LUK provides Assessment and Evaluation (A&E) Services for children, adolescents, young adults, adults, and families involved with DCF. Assessment services are part of LUK’s Support and Stabilization (S&S) continuum of services and are provided by LUK’s Behavioral Health Clinic Services (BHCS). A&E Services will offer the following assessments and evaluations provided by independently licensed behavioral health professionals or Masters-Level staff supervised by independently licensed supervisors:
– Integrated Psychological Evaluation
– Trauma Evaluation
– Comprehensive Behavioral Health Assessment
– Substance Abuse/Addiction Assessment
– Family Assessment
– Behavioral Assessment
– Parenting Assessment
– Occupational Therapy Evaluation
Target Population: Children, adolescents, young adults, adults, and families involved with DCF.
Average Involvement Length: Varies by evaluation.
Last updated May 7, 2025.