National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, S. Smith, et al, June 2011.
This report describes key strategies for creating a comprehensive system of supports for young children’s mental health and provides examples from states using these strategies. It also includes a tool that state planners can use to assess progress and plan steps toward building a strong system of early childhood mental health supports.
AHRQ Innovations Exchange, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health
With funding from the state government, the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project uses regional teams of mental health professionals to support pediatric primary care clinicians throughout the state in diagnosing and treating patients with mental health issues. The teams provide telephone consultations during visits and, as needed, follow-up, face-to-face consultations with patients.
Read the complete Innovation Profile here.
Data Trends,Summaries of research on mental health services for children and adolescents and their families, #148, 2007; Human Organizations, 66(3), 315-326; Henry, D., Bales, R., & Graves, E.
Summary
"Using a cultural anthropological approach to cost-benefit analysis, the authors conducted an efficiency
evaluation of a system of care. The ethnographic study revealed monetary costs and other benefits not otherwise
included in traditional evaluations, such as hidden costs; costs not incurred due to access to effective
services; and positive outcomes for parents in the community, children’s mental health, and relationships
between children and their families." (Data Trends)
To read the complete summary, click here.
AHRQ, Grand Valley Health Plan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2010.
Summary
In an effort to provide more comprehensive care to pediatric and adult members, Grand Valley Health Plan, a 10,000-member staff model health maintenance organization, integrated mental and behavioral health care and nutrition services into six of its primary care clinics. Because mental health care is provided under the same roof—and often on the same day—as a patient's medical appointment, the physician and mental health professional can seamlessly collaborate to deliver "whole" person care, rather than the traditional approach through which patients receive separate care from separate providers. Between 2002 and 2006, this integrated approach decreased mental health–related hospitalizations by more than 50 percent, from 5.86 to 2.69 hospitalizations per 1,000 members, while leading to well-above average scores on key mental health metrics. (AHRQ)
Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, by A. Schlosberg and M. Levons, Feb. 2010.
Summary
Children’s Crisis Treatment Center (CcTC) has developed a model of care that helps meet the needs of these vulnerable children in Philadelphia’s immigrant, minority, and refugee communities by providing high-quality, comprehensive mental and behavioral health services through community integration. (PSIJ)
Click here to read the article at the Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal web site.
Virginia Commission on Youth, 2010.
Summary
This publication is intended to provide information to families, clinicians, administrators, policymakers and others seeking information about evidence-based practices for child and adolescent mental health disorders. The revised Collection has categories that represent different levels of scientific support for a particular treatment: 1. What Works, 2. What Seems to Work, 3. What Does Not Work, 4. Not Adequately Tested, and 5. Not Tested. Because research is ongoing, treatments are expected to move around among the categories with time. The Collection 4th Edition also includes information on assessment in order to emphasize that all clinical decisions should be made in consultation with the data.
SAMHSA, Systems of Care, 5/2010.
Summary
This report provides an overview of the systems of care program and how youth and their families improve on various behavioral and mental health outcomes a result of receiving services in systems of care. Findings from the national evaluation of the systems of care program are highlighted for youth aged 14 - 18 years old. This brief report demonstrates how youth improve academically, behaviorally, and emotionally after receiving services for 12 months in federally funded systems of care. (SAMHSA)
PEDIATRICS, Jane Meschan Foy, MD, James Perrin, MD, Vol. 125 Supplement June 2010, pp. S75-S86 (doi:10.1542/peds.2010-0788D)
Extract
Pediatricians and other primary care clinicians caring for children traditionally have focused their attention on meeting the health care needs of individual children they see in their offices and clinics. However, effective care of the growing number of children and families who are experiencing chronic medical and mental disorders will also require a "population" health perspective. Many policy statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have pointed to the importance of the population perspective in providing and improving pediatric health services. From this perspective, all members of a community are affected by the health of its individual members. For children, mental health resides not solely within the child but within the web of interactions that connect the child, the family and school, health and other child service systems, and the neighborhood and community in which the child lives. This is not to deny that biology is a determinant of mental health and mental illness; rather, biological factors interact with the psychosocial environment to result in mental health, mental illness, and recovery from mental illness.
To access the complete article at the PEDIATRICS web site, click here.
Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures web site, Portland State University. Koroloff, N., Davis, M., Johnsen, M., & Starrett, B. (2009), Center for Mental Health Services, Rockville, MD: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Summary
This report summarizes changes between 2003 and 2007 in relationships among organizations that offer services to individuals in transition to adulthood, ages 14-25, who have serious mental health conditions in Clark County, Washington.
Click here to access the complete report at Pathways RTC web site.
Abstract
The importance of helping families of children with severe emotional disturbances (SED) connect with informal or natural supports—that is, individuals who are part of their ongoing communities and daily lives—has been widely recognized. Utilization of informal supports has thus become a core element within systems of care (SOCs) designed to improve services for children with SED and their families. However, research demonstrates that implementation of wraparound, the key practice approach within SOCs, often does not include involvement of informal supports. Using a measure of social connectedness (SC), developed to augment the instruments used for the SOC national evaluation, this study assessed parents’ and caregivers’ views of their connections to and support from their community within a SOC. Overall, parents and caregivers reported low levels of support across multiple sources as well as a desire for more support. Greater levels of perceived support related positively to caregiver strain, types of and satisfaction with services received, and views of their communities as supportive and safe. Greater attention to families’ contexts and the identification of effective ways to connect families to their communities are recommended.Click here to access the journal article at Wiley OnLine Library.
