Mental Health Screening and Monitoring for Children in Care provides a concise, step-by-step guide for children’s agencies on how to carry out mental health screening and monitoring for children and adolescents growing up in alternative care. Michael Tarren-Sweeney outlines unique universal mental health screening and monitoring procedures that can be implemented without the need for clinical training or professional oversight. These procedures reliably identify which children should be referred to clinical services for a comprehensive assessment, and which children do not require further assessment. Informed by recent empirical research carried out with children in foster care in Australia and the Netherlands, these procedures screen the vast majority of children who have clinical-level difficulties for a second-stage assessment, including those with attachment- and trauma-related difficulties, meaning that very few such children remain undetected. This book is an invaluable resource for charitable children’s agencies, children’s service providers, statutory children’s services, children’s social workers, and post-adoption support services.

Healthy mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) development is a critical foundation for a productive adulthood. Much is known about strategies to support families and communities in strengthening the MEB development of children and youth, by promoting healthy development and also by preventing and mitigating disorder, so that young people reach adulthood ready to thrive and contribute to society. Over the last decade, a growing body of research has significantly strengthened understanding of healthy MEB development and the factors that influence it, as well as how it can be fostered. Yet, the United States has not taken full advantage of this growing knowledge base. Ten years later, the nation still is not effectively mitigating risks for poor MEB health outcomes; these risks remain prevalent, and available data show no significant reductions in their prevalence. Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development in Children and Youth: A National Agenda examines the gap between current research and achievable national goals for the next ten years. This report identifies the complexities of childhood influences and highlights the need for a tailored approach when implementing new policies and practices. This report provides a framework for a cohesive, multidisciplinary national approach to improving MEB health.

Handbook of Pediatric Psychological Screening and Assessment in Primary Care provides an overview of the principles of screening, monitoring, and measuring of the treatment outcomes of behavioral health disorders in pediatric primary care. The Handbook serves as a guide to the selection of psychometric measures that can be used to screen for and/or assess behavioral health problems of children and adolescents. The Handbook is an invaluable reference to behavioral health clinicans in maximizing potential benefits in efficient assessment and effective treatment of children and adolescents in pediatric primary care settings as well as other health care settings.

The Assessment Checklist series, created by Michael Tarren-Sweeney, provides the world’s first standardised caregiver-report measures of a range of attachment- and trauma-related mental health difficulties experienced amongst children growing up in foster, adoptive, kinship and residential care. This clinical manual provides essential guidance for child and adolescent mental health clinicians who use the Assessment Checklist measures, including the Assessment Checklist for Children (ACC), the Assessment Checklist for Adolescents (ACA) and the Brief Assessment Checklists (BAC), as part of their specialized assessments of children and adolescents in care. Split into three parts, the book explores all aspects of using and interpreting the Checklist series. Part 1 provides an overview of the Assessment Checklist measures, the rationale for their development and instructions on how to use the measures for clinical assessment, screening and treatment monitoring. Part 2 provides expert guidance to clinicians on interpreting Assessment Checklist score profiles and provides detailed information about several specific types of mental health difficulties measured by them. Part 3 describes the development and psychometric properties of the various Assessment Checklist measures, including information about their validity and reliability. It also introduces several new measures that are under development. Ideal for clinical child psychologists, child and adolescent psychiatrists, child psychotherapists and clinical social workers looking to improve the quality and depth of their clinical assessments with children and adolescents, this book provides essential guidance on professional use of the Assessment Checklist measures.

Conference held Sept. 18-19, 2000, Washington, DC. The purpose of the conference was to engage a group of citizens in a thoughtful, meaningful dialogue about issues of prevention, identification, recognition, and referral of children with mental health needs to appropriate, evidence-based treatments or services.

These guidelines from NICE set out clear recommendations, based on the best available evidence, for health care professionals on how to work with and implement physical, psychological and service-level interventions for people with various mental health conditions.The book contains the full guidelines that cannot be obtained in print anywhere else. It brings together all of the evidence that led to the recommendations made, detailed explanations of the methodology behind their preparation, plus an overview of the condition covering detection, diagnosis and assessment, and the full range of treatment and care approaches. There is a worse prognosis for psychosis and schizophrenia when onset is in childhood or adolescence, and this new NICE guideline puts much-needed emphasis on early recognition and assessment of possible psychotic symptoms. For the one-third of children and young people who go on to experience severe impairment as a result of psychosis or schizophrenia the guideline also offers comprehensive advice from assessment and treatment of the first episode through to promoting recovery.This guideline reviews the evidence for recognition and management of psychosis and schizophrenia in children and young people across the care pathway, encompassing access to and delivery of services, experience of care, recognition and management of at-risk mental states, psychological and pharmacological interventions, and improving cognition and enhancing engagement with education and employment.