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Vol.
4, No. 2
May 1999
Child
Welfare and Mental Health Issues
A lot
of mental health issues affect children's services. There are those
that have to do with mental illness, developmental disabilities,
and substance abuse in the families and children you see in your
work. Then there's the challenge of maintaining your own mental
health while you work with families in crisis.
And then
there are the interagency, professional-to-professional issues of
interacting with mental health workers and with North Carolina's
large and sometimes confusing public mental health system. These
are the issues that lead to questions such as, "why won't they accept
my referral?" or "why does it always come back to the issue of confidentiality?"
or "what's going on over there--I can't keep up with all the changes!"
This
edition of Practice Notes is primarily concerned with this
last issue--the challenge of working effectively with our state's
mental health system. We hope these pages will help you in your
efforts to collaborate with the people in the mental health system,
and to improve outcomes for the families and children you serve.
For
additional information, consult these resources:
- A
View from the Child Welfare System
This report details information to consider when designing a public
behavioral health managed care system to meet the needs of children
and families in the child welfare system. Along with the necessary
components of any public behavioral health system (e.g., access
to services, coordination of care), child welfare professionals
will learn how four communities designed programs and services
specifically for children involved in the child welfare system.
In addition, the paper discusses some of the decisions States
and communities will need to make about how the child welfare
and behavioral health systems will work together.
<http://www.georgetown.edu/research/gucdc/cw2.pdf>
- Making
Interagency Initiatives Work for Children and Families in the
Child Welfare System
A companion paper to "A View from the Child Welfare
System," this report describes the basis for collaborative
efforts on the part of behavioral health, child welfare, and other
agencies to provide services to children with behavioral health
needs.
<http://www.georgetown.edu/research/gucdc/cw3.pdf>
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