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Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

News Release	Contact: Curtis R. Austin
February 18, 1999	301-443-2792

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) today announced at the Federal/National Partnership for Children's Mental Health national meeting the availability of a new seven-volume series of promising practices for families, communities and care givers in building exemplary systems of care for children with serious emotional disturbances and their families.

The series, Promising Practices: Systems of Care for Children with Serious Emotional Disturbances and Their Families in the United States of America, was developed by grantees funded by CMHS's Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program. The practices identified are based on the experiences of 22 of the current 41 program grantees in their work to create a system of care for children with serious emotional disturbance and their families. Volumes in the series describe promising practices in training, service delivery, collaboration, school coordination, managed care, cultural competence, and roles for families in systems of care.

"What we hope to achieve through wide dissemination of these promising practices is the broad-based adoption of programs that work at the community, family and individual levels," said CMHS Director Bernard S. Arons, M.D. "This information will be highly useful to a wide variety of audiences–from direct service providers to policy makers to others who also are invested in the well-being of our nation's children."

Volume I - New Roles for Families in Systems of Care: Explores ways in which family members can become equal partners with services providers and administrators, focusing specifically on two emerging roles–family members as "system of care facilitators" and "family as faculty."

Volume II - Promising Practices in Family-Provider Collaboration: Examines the fundamental challenges and key aspects of success in building collaboration between families and service providers.

Volume III - The Role of Education in a System of Care: Effectively Serving Children with Emotional Behavioral Disorders: Explores sites successful in overcoming obstacles to educating children with a serious emotional disturbance and establishing successful school-based systems of care.

Volume IV - Promising Practices in "Wraparound" Care Involving the Child and Family: Identifies the essential elements of "wraparound" care, provides an analysis of the research previously done on the topic, and examines how three sites are turning wraparound care into promising practices in their system of care.

Volume V - Promising Practices: Training Strategies for Serving Children with Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families in a System of Care: Examines theories of adult learning, core values, and four key areas (cultural competence, family-professional relationships, systems thinking, and inter-professional education and training), and looks at promising practices that are combining these concepts into a successful sustainable training program.

Volume VI - Promising Practices: Building Collaboration in Systems of Care: Explores the importance of collaboration in a system of care focusing on three specific issues: the foundations of collaboration, strategies for implementing the collaborative process, and the results of collaboration.

Volume VII - A Compilation of Lessons Learned from the 22 Grantees of the 1997 Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program: Grantees share their experiences in five main areas: family involvement/empowerment, cultural competency, systems of care, evaluation, and managed care.

The seven-volume set may be obtained free of charge by calling the CMHS' Knowledge Exchange Network (KEN) at 1-800-789-2647, or on the Internet by clicking on the "Children's Campaign" on the KEN Website at http://www.mentalhealth.org.

Administered by the Center for Mental Health Services' Child, Adolescent and Family Branch, the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program provides grants to states, communities, territories, and Indian tribes to improve and expand their system of care to meet the needs of children with serious emotional disturbances and their families. These grants enable communities to develop local systems of care highlighting service collaborations among mental health, child welfare, education, juvenile justice, education and other appropriate services.

CMHS is a component of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). SAMHSA, a public health agency in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, is the federal government's lead agency for improving the quality and availability of substance abuse prevention, addiction treatment and mental health services in the United States.

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Last Updated 11-7-02