Principal Investigator(s): Gregory Aarons, Ph.D. UC San Diego, Danielle Fettes, Ph.D. UC San Diego, Marisa Sklar, Ph.D. UC San Diego
Half of child-welfare involved children and adolescents meet criteria for at least one current mental disorder. Shared decision-making for Action Plans is vital to the mental health and wellbeing of children and families in Child Welfare Services (CWS), with fewer child removals and fewer recurrences, thus resulting in decreased risk of child trauma, behavioral concerns, and mental health concerns. Yet, neither parents nor caseworkers perceive that Action Plans include mutual influence, and parents feel they have no voice or input. Child and family team (CFT) meetings are required for each child or youth within sixty days of entering CWS, and are family-centered and collaborative ways to develop individualized, effective service plans based on mutual agreement. Relying on teamwork approaches, CFT meetings intend to give children and families a voice in creating and guiding their case plans, suggest children do better when connected to their families and empower families to work with CWS agencies, and address organizational need for teams to perform complex, interdependent, dynamic, and ambiguous tasks.” Yet, in CWS CFT meetings, the quality of teamwork can be impaired by the inherent challenges of serving multiple needs and viewpoints that vary across family members and professionals, as well as the pressures and constraints of CWS. Innovations from team effectiveness research hold promise in facilitating improvements in shared decision-making within CWS.
Funding Information: NIMH, P50, MH126231
Study time period: 2022 - 2027