Eligibility Criteria for Community Support Services:

A severely mentally disabled adult client eligible for CSS/CSP is a person 18 years or over, with a severe and/or persistent mental or emotional disorder that seriously impairs his/her functioning relative to such primary aspects of daily living as personal relations, living arrangements, or employment, but for whom long term 24-hour care in a hospital, nursing home or protective facility can be averted. In addition to the above general definition, persons appropriate for CSS/CSP and regarded as CSS/CSP clients, meet the following criteria:

• Severe Disability Resulting from Mental Illness:
• CSS/CSP client meets at least one of the following criteria:
  
  
  • Has undergone psychiatric treatment more intensive than outpatient care, more than once in a lifetime, (e.g., emergency services, alternative home care, partial hospitalization or inpatient hospitalization)
  • Has experienced a single episode of continuous, structured supportive residential care other than hospitalization for a duration of at least two months.
  • Impaired Role Functioning

In addition, such individuals meet at least two of the following criteria, on a continuing or intermittent basis for at least two years:

• If employed, is employed in a sheltered setting, or has markedly limited skills or a poor work history;
• requires public financial assistance for out-of-hospital maintenance and may be unable to procure such assistance without help;
• shows inability to establish or maintain a personal social support system;
• requires help in basic living skills;
• exhibits inappropriate social behavior which results in demand for intervention by the mental health and/or judicial system.

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