Methodist Family Health

Methodist Family Health offers the only comprehensive behavioral health care service for children and adolescents in Arkansas, covering the most intensive service level to the least.

Methodist’s services include acute psychiatric hospital care, psychiatric residential treatment, therapeutic group homes, therapeutic foster care, emergency shelters, therapeutic day treatment, early childhood development and counseling clinics, including school-based counseling services.

Not only that, CEO Andy Altom said, all Methodist treatment programs use the same nationally recognized “teaching-family model of care” used by Boys Town. Altom said that having all services function according to the same model eases patients into different services.

“In that ebb and flow from structured to non-structured environments, we provide a consistent model of care so that, even though they are changing locations, they are still under the same system, so that they are not having to relearn the ropes,” Altom said.

Methodist Family Health was founded in 2003 when the United Methodist Children’s Home and its subsidiary, United Methodist Behavioral Hospital, joined to form a single management company for the two organizations’ operations.

At the same time, Methodist Family Health Foundation was formed as a new nonprofit entity to serve the public relations, fund-raising and development arm of the operating entities.

Methodist has pushed the envelope in applying the teaching-family model, which was originally designed for group home and foster home settings. Currently the United Methodist Behavioral Hospital is the only teaching-family association certified hospital in the nation.

Today, Methodist Family Health serves 360 clients every day and an additional 300 outpatients on an intermittent basis, with operations in 22 cities across the state.