About Children's Mental Health
Over the last ten years, the KU School of Social Welfare’s Children’s Mental Health Research Team has conducted action-oriented research intended to improve the lives of children and families in Kansas.
The primary impact of these efforts has been to help develop, evaluate, and improve the statewide system of community-based services available to children with mental health needs and their families. Because of our collaborative efforts with the Kansas Mental Health Authority, children with mental health needs and their families can access more and better services within their home communities
Although a statewide community-based system of mental health services was initiated by the Kansas legislature in the early 1990’s, these efforts were initially focused on services for adults. The first two KU children’s projects in the late 1990’s developed and implemented an outcome reporting system (called the Client Status Report) and a statewide consumer satisfaction survey. The data from these projects, which continue to this day, have been used by the state authority and local Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) to change and improve services.
Many recent research projects focus on studying how to improve the coordination and integration of the multiple service systems that impact families—mental health, child welfare, juvenile justice, developmental disabilities, and education. Currently, there are more than 20 individual projects addressing methods to improve the provision of services for this vulnerable population.
The various projects have impacted services in three major areas:
Development of the community-based system of services. This category encompasses new program initiatives that are implemented and tested. Current and past projects include
the following:
- Implementation of Family Directed Structural Therapy in Manhattan and Olathe
- Demonstration Transition to Adulthood Program (Pittsburg)
- Implementation Study of Blended Programming for Youth with Co-Occurring Disorders
- Best Practices Reports (19 total) on a variety of topics of interest to practitioners and policy makers.
Evaluation of the community-based system of services. This
category includes the two original projects described above plus many other
projects that have helped to guide policy and programming. These include the
following:
- The Utilization of State Hospitals for Children and Adolescents (Statewide)
- Evaluation of Early Mental Health Intervention Programs
- Kansas Family and Youth Consumer Satisfaction Survey
- Mental Health Services for Youth in Transition (between 14-25 years of age)
- The Use of Professional Parents in the Kansas Mental Health System
Improvement of the community-based system of care. This category includes the subcategories of cross-system coordination and training/technical assistance.
- Cross-system projects include projects that link mental health to other service systems such as developmental disabilities, child welfare, and juvenile justice.
- Training projects include an Annual Children’s Mental Health Conference and Training in Family Directed Structural Therapy (Manhattan and Olathe).
- Three full-time staff members based with the Mental Health Authority provide technical assistance statewide in the areas of transition from institutional to community treatment, consumer/parent services, and early childhood mental health.
The projects are directed the following Principal Investigators:
