Building best practice in child protection at the intersection of child protection and adult mental health services

Funded Activity Summary

This research is an investigation of child protection practices with families where at least one parent has been diagnosed with a serious mental illness (affective or non-affective psychosis), and where child abuse or neglect has been substantiated or children are at risk of significant harm. It is specifically concerned to understand processes of interagency collaboration between workers in state government child protection and mental health service systems. The research has several aims. These are, first, to identify and examine the current practices of child protection and mental health workers where protective concerns have been identified in relation to children whose parent-s have been diagnosed with a mental illness. Practice will be examined at the assessment, child protection follow-up and post-order phases. Second, to identify and examine any barriers to effective collaboration between child protection and mental health organisations; and third, to develop inductively derived descriptions of 'best practice' in relation to these cases. The research will be conducted in four stages, including a survey of child protection and mental health workers, tracking of cases through the child protection system, in-depth interviews with child protection workers, mental health workers and parents, and group discussions with highly experienced child protection and mental health workers. The expected outcomes of the study are: the development of child protection practice guidelines for working with families where children have been harmed or at risk of harm by a parent who has a mental illness, including practice guidelines for interagency collaboration in this field; and identification of supervisional, training, administrative and policy responses to this issue.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2002

End Date: 01-01-2004

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $294,590.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Health And Community Services

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

best practice | child maltreatment | mental health | mental health services | services research | social research

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