Mental Health Services for Foster Children

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ultimate goal of this Career Development Award is to provide the applicant with the skills and knowledge necessary to study an ecological mental health service model for foster children. The award will allow the applicant to gain the expertise necessary to develop and study service models that integrate mental health functions into child welfare service operations and provide ecologically focused services in foster homes and in schools. Several factors provide an exceptional opportunity to develop an effective context-specific service model, including the high expenditures on clinical services in child welfare, the pervasive nature of child welfare services, and the recent attention on foster children's low academic achievement and the poor conditions in many foster homes. The proposed model will integrate mental health interventions into existing child welfare services to capitalize on the existing service contacts that occur in foster homes and schools with limited evidence of effectiveness. With this Career Development Award, the applicant will build upon a strong background in research methods, direct practice in child welfare, and applied research with foster children. The proposed goals include gaining advanced skills in research and statistical methods; knowledge and skills in the implementation of effective intervention technologies in foster homes and schools; skills in the use of strategies to enhance model sustainability and an understanding of how agency and state-level factors affect sustainability. These enhanced skills and knowledge will allow the applicant to pursue mental health services research with the goal of studying sustainable, effective service models for foster children. The research plan consists of two studies. In the first, secondary analyses using methods appropriate for longitudinal analysis of clustered data will be used to test foster parent and agency-level effects on changes in foster children's emotional and behavioral problems over time. The second study will be a pilot study of an integrated foster home-school intervention for children with behavior problems that will involve providing foster behavior management training, case consultation with teachers, and support of foster parents and teachers in their use of behavior management and strategies to support academic performance. A provider team including existing mental health providers, caseworkers, and paraprofessionals will provide services in an existing agency. This pilot study will form the basis for a future R01 project to develop and test the effectiveness of an integrated foster home and school-based mental health service model for foster children.