Background & Need

Since the mid-1980s, states and communities have been striving to build coordinated Systems of Care in children’s mental health. A basic premise of the Systems of Care model is that multiple child-serving sectors including mental health, substance abuse, juvenile justice, child welfare, and education work together to plan and deliver a comprehensive array of effective services and treatments to meet the individual needs of children, adolescents and their families. While the Systems of Care approach has been widely adopted, the field is still working diligently/intensively to develop comprehensive arrays of effective services and treatments that will help support families to achieve the goals and outcomes they desire.

The term evidence-based practice (EBPs) refers to treatments and services that have been found to be effective in helping children and families reach desirable outcomes. Accordingly, EBPs are being added to the service arrays of states and communities across the nation. In selecting EBPs, consideration is given to how the new practices:

  • Fit with the needs, context, culture, and values of families, communities, and neighborhoods
  • Will be incorporated in local service arrays within family-driven, quality-improvement oriented systems of care

Implementing new EBPs can be challenging, frequently requiring practitioners and supervisors to receive special training, new financial structures, and new ways to measure how the service is being delivered and how children and families are improving as a result. New ways of thinking about change, and shared values regarding how to use evaluation and research data, are needed. Experience indicates that challenges need to be anticipated up-front, and that a context or culture needs to be built that supports evidence-based and promising practices.

Navigation Hints:

The next few sections of the Resource Guide answer questions you may have about terms used throughout the Resource Guide, including:

Links that describe a wide range of specific evidence-based and promising practices are also available throughout the Guide.