How do I get started?
Call us.
Whether you are referring a child to Mercy Home or you are a young person who wants to learn more about the help we can provide, your first step is to call us at (312) 738-7590 and talk to a specific care manager in our Admissions Department.
We will ask you a few identifying questions and give you more information about the admissions process.
If you call after business hours, please don’t hesitate to leave a message. Make sure to give us your name and phone number, as well as the age and gender of the child you are referring, and we will get back to you within 24 hours.
During our first phone conversation, we will briefly discuss the young person’s circumstances to determine whether Mercy Home might be a good fit for his or her specific needs.
Be sure to see our frequently asked questions page about the admissions process. We may request more information, or schedule an informational session for you to meet with our staff.
Information Session
Informational sessions take place at our office just west of downtown Chicago, and are conducted by a care manager.
The young person and his or her caregivers will have a chance to discuss the child’s personal circumstances and will learn more detailed information about our services and our expectations.
Following this meeting, it is then up to the young person to decide whether he or she wants to continue with the admissions process. Our first criteria for the admissions process is the child’s motivation—for change to be possible, it is up to each young person to decide whether he or she wants to come to Mercy Home.
Sometimes during this phase, we may know right away that residential placement at Mercy Home is not the most appropriate course of action. Similarly, the applicants themselves may decide that they do not wish to continue to seek placement at Mercy Home. In such cases, we will work with you to find other resources that might better address the child’s needs.
We also provide a copy of the Client Bill of Rights, and work with you to complete consent forms so that we can gather information from your child’s current and former schools, as well as any other significant individuals or institutions, such as a therapist or hospital. The consent forms can be found here.
Documents we need to obtain before we can complete the admissions process include:
- Standardized test scores (Explore, Plan, ISAT, Terra Nova)
- Unofficial school transcripts (including all earned credits & year in school)
- Current class schedule with grades in progress
- Copy of current Individualized Education Plan (IEP) (if applicable))
- Attendance record (noting all absences and tardies)
- Medical records (physicals, immunizations, dental records)
- Behavior records (detentions, suspensions, conduct reports, etc.)
- Complete hospital and/or legal records (if applicable)
You may bring some of these documents after the informational session; however, anything you can bring to the first meeting will greatly speed up the process. Mercy Home rarely keeps incoming youth at their current schools, and we cannot determine a new school placement without complete records. We work with more than 50 public and private schools in the area and these records help us make sure your child’s new school is a good fit.
After we have obtained all of the necessary records and you have signed the consent forms, we can move into the assessment phase.
Assessment
This meeting between you and our Admissions staff includes a more in-depth interview, a meeting with one of our school resources coordinators, and educational testing that helps us address the child’s academic needs. One of our diagnosticians will then meet with you and the child. Each child also takes a few short tests. The Assessment meeting can take about 5 hours. The process then moves on to the Acceptance phase.
Acceptance
Once all of this information is compiled, we will make a decision regarding whether or not placement in Mercy Home is in the best interests of the young person.
If we decide that it is, we work to place each child in the residential setting within Mercy Home that is best suited to his or her needs. If room is not available at the Home immediately, the child will be placed on a waiting list until space becomes available.
When a young person is notified of acceptance into Mercy Home, we will schedule a move in date.
Sometimes, we may determine that a child needs services outside of Mercy Home’s residential programs. For youth who are not admitted, we connect them to other service agencies that can best address their specific needs.
