Barriers and facilitators to delivering effective mental health practice strategies for youth and families served by the child welfare system

Antonio R. Garcia, Elizabeth Circo, Christina DeNard and Natalie Hernandez

Children and Youth Services Review, 2015, vol. 52, issue C, 110-122

Abstract: While the gap between need for and access to mental health services is well documented among children of color in foster care, little is known about why they are sustained. To illuminate barriers of service delivery, thirty-six caseworkers participated in one of five focus group meetings in a large urban Mid-Atlantic City. Ground Theory Methods revealed that there are barriers and facilitators at the macro, meso, and micro practice orientations. At the macro-level, development of effective practice strategies and proximity to effective services are likely to influence dissemination of effective practices. Secondly, at the meso-level, job support is needed to facilitate awareness, but for case managers to feel supported, they need effective training and opportunities to facilitate interagency collaboration. Finally, at the micro-level, cultural competence largely impacts implementation of effective practices. However, increased awareness around the social ills of stigma and the salience of “insider work” are needed to increase cultural competence. A “downstream” effect in which there are numerous barriers identified at the macro level has a direct negative impact on organizational capacity and readiness to deliver and engage youth and families in mental health services served by the child welfare system. Findings underscore the need for child welfare agencies to build supports at the macro, meso, and micro practice levels to ameliorate mental health service disparities.

Keywords: Child welfare; Mental health services; Dissemination; Implementation; Disparities; Race; Ethnicity; Engagement; Community-based agencies; Privatization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190740915000912
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:52:y:2015:i:c:p:110-122

DOI: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2015.03.008

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().