Practitioners

Practitioners in children's mental health may practice in many different settings and play many different roles:

• Case manager
• Therapist
• Child welfare worker
• Juvenile justice counselor
• Psychiatrist
• Psychiatric nurse

Child-serving systems such as mental health, child welfare, juvenile-justice, substance-abuse, and schools, are often not aligned in their service delivery and coordination mechanisms. This climate makes it challenging to provide comprehensive one-stop approaches to care.

Moving toward an evidence-based culture focuses the children's mental health system on achieving desired outcomes for children and families with the use of standardized and manualized treatment protocols that have been shown to be effective. To build an evidence-based culture in a community, agency, and/or organization, practitioners must be actively involved in learning about evidence-based interventions, becoming trained in these interventions, and using data to drive their clinical practice.

This section includes helpful tools, links, informational materials, and references for practitioners to learn more about evidence-based care. This Resource Guide offers a framework for considering how practitioners and mental health systems can adapt their practice to promote evidence-based cultures.

The Practitioners' section addresses the following topics:

• Process of Selecting Interventions
• Partnering with Youth and Families
• Assessing Youth and Family Needs
• Matching EBPs to the Needs of Youth and Families
• Making it Work
• Professional Development
• Training in Specific EBPs
• Coaching and Supervision
• Monitoring Fidelity and Outcomes