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Washington’s Mental Health Referral Service for Children and Teens connects patients and families with evidence-supported outpatient mental health services in their community. This free, telephone-based referral service is funded by Washington Healthcare Authority and operated by Seattle Children’s.
The Mental Health Referral Service will provide thorough mental health referrals for children and teens 17 and younger from across Washington.
See our program highlights from the Referral Service.
Download informational flyers about our program for families. All flyers are PDFs.
Referral information provided to your patient will also be faxed to you.
Our mental health referral specialists, trained in evidence-supported models of coaching and relational support.
Washington’s Mental Health Referral Service keeps a database of licensed mental health outpatient providers that we update daily. Information comes from health plan panels of providers and outreach calls we make.
Pediatric mental health providers in Washington state who want to be added to the database can call 833-303-5437 or fill out an online form.
If you are a provider who is already in the database and would like to update your availability, please fill out our Provider Availability form.
The database includes details such as:
A goal of the service is to match families with an evidence-supported practice when possible. These therapies include:
No. Seattle Children’s operates the Mental Health Referral Service for Washington state. The service is for children and teens from across Washington who need outpatient mental health services in their local communities. Patients do not need to be seen at Seattle Children’s.
The MHRS provider database can only be accessed by the Referral Service staff. The best way to receive information on mental health providers in the database is to have the family and/or adolescent seeking services call our main line so we can provide a tailored list of resources to match the situation, insurance and availability needs for treatment.
In developing the Mental Health Referral Service, a common message was that families receive long lists of providers in their community to outreach and end up reaching dead ends because providers either aren't a good fit or do not have current availability. The Referral Service was created to address this barrier by providing 1-3 individualized resources for each adolescent or family of a child that would be a good fit for their symptoms and have availability. The Referral Service ensures accurate, up-to-date information before sharing referral lists with families through outreach. Ensuring that data is current and accurate for all providers within the database to maintain a publicly available list is not feasible without information being potentially outdated.
In addition to tailored referrals for families, the provider information in our database was gathered with consent from each mental health provider to be used by the Referral Staff; we do not currently have consent to share this information with outside agencies.
Family line: 833-303-5437
Interpreter line: 1-866-583-1527