Pediatric PHP: full-day care, home each night.

Day Treatment (PHP) is a clinically defined level of care, the structured middle ground between inpatient and outpatient. At NorthStar Day, PHP runs Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., in our Palm Beach Gardens, FL facility. Children come in for the day; they go home every night.

The clinical content is what makes it PHP. Multiple therapy disciplines on the same day. CBT and DBT-informed skills, Floortime, Social Skills Training, OT, speech-language, family work, and psychiatry as indicated. All of it coordinated by a team meeting weekly about every child. Small, consistent groups. Individualized scheduling.

PHP is for children whose presentation is too complex or too acute for weekly outpatient therapy to hold. Often that means co-occurring conditions: autism with mood symptoms, ADHD with sensory processing differences, trauma sitting underneath behavioral dysregulation. Sometimes it means a single condition expressing itself at an intensity outpatient can't safely manage.

PHP is often the right level when:

• Outpatient therapy has been in place but isn't moving the needle
• The presentation involves multiple disciplines (OT, SLP, behavioral, psychiatric) that need to coordinate
• School isn't safely or productively running for the child right now
• The family system needs more support than once-a-week parent sessions provide
• The child has been stepping down from inpatient and needs structured day support

PHP isn't forever. The clinical question we ask weekly is: what would make stepping down to our after-school IOP (or to outpatient therapy alone) the right call, and when. Step-down is a clinical decision made together with the family, not a discharge target.

Because IOP runs in the same building, on the same care plan, reviewed in the same weekly team meeting, the step-down doesn't start your child's treatment over. Your child returns to a full school day and comes to us in the afternoon, picking up the same goals at a lower intensity. Our educational and case management team coordinates with the home school to make that transition land.

Choosing between PHP and IOP isn't a guess. Our clinical team completes an evaluation and recommends a starting level of care based on your child's actual presentation, history, and family situation. The first call is a 15-minute conversation. Intake calls are returned within the hour.