IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/cysrev/v32y2010i5p691-697.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mental health services for children and youth in the child welfare system: A focus on caregivers as gatekeepers

Author

Listed:
  • Villagrana, Margarita

Abstract

Caregivers serve as gatekeepers for children while in the child welfare system, but few studies have focused on the caregiver and the factors that influence the use of mental health services for the children under their care. The purpose of this study was to examine the child's mental health need, the caregiver's level of stress, depression, and social support, and the utilization of mental health services by children using the three most common types of caregivers in the child welfare system (i.e., birth parent, relative caregiver, and foster parent). Data comes from the Patterns of Care (POC) study of five public sectors of care. The present study examined parents/caregivers and youth from the child welfare sector. Findings suggest that while birth parents were more likely to endorse more risk factors for themselves, and the children under their care had a higher level of mental health need, they were the least likely to utilize mental health services for the children under their care. Implications for the child welfare and mental health systems are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Villagrana, Margarita, 2010. "Mental health services for children and youth in the child welfare system: A focus on caregivers as gatekeepers," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 691-697, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:32:y:2010:i:5:p:691-697
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(10)00010-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Angold, A. & Farmer, E.M.Z. & Costello, E.J. & Burns, B.J. & Stangl, D. & Messer, S.C., 1998. "Perceived parental burden and service use for child and adolescent psychiatric disorders," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(1), pages 75-80.
    2. Garland, Ann F. & Besinger, Bridgett A., 1997. "Racial/Ethnic Differences in Court Referred Pathways to Mental Health Services for Children in Foster Care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 651-666, December.
    3. Shore, Nancy & Sim, Kelly E. & Le Prohn, Nicole S. & Keller, Thomas E., 2002. "Foster parent and teacher assessments of youth in kinship and non-kinship foster care placements: are behaviors perceived differently across settings?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 109-134.
    4. Rosenthal, James A. & Curiel, Herman F., 2006. "Modeling behavioral problems of children in the child welfare system: Caregiver, youth, and teacher perceptions," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(11), pages 1391-1408, November.
    5. DosReis, S. & Zito, J.M. & Safer, D.J. & Soeken, K.L., 2001. "Mental health services for youths in foster care and disabled youths," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 91(7), pages 1094-1099.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Petrenko, Christie L.M. & Culhane, Sara E. & Garrido, Edward F. & Taussig, Heather N., 2011. "Do youth in out-of-home care receive recommended mental health and educational services following screening evaluations?," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1911-1918, October.
    2. Dolbin-MacNab, Megan L. & Smith, Gregory C. & Hayslip, Bert, 2022. "The role of social services in reunified custodial grandfamilies," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    3. Fawley-King, Kya & Trask, Emily V. & Ferrand, John & Aarons, Gregory A., 2020. "Caregiver strain among biological, foster, and adoptive caregivers caring for youth receiving outpatient care in a public mental health system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    4. Swanke, Jayme R. & Yampolskaya, Svetlana & Strozier, Anne & Armstrong, Mary I., 2016. "Mental health service utilization and time to care: A comparison of children in traditional foster care and children in kinship care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 154-158.
    5. Coleman, Kanisha L. & Wu, Qi, 2016. "Kinship care and service utilization: A review of predisposing, enabling, and need factors," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 201-210.
    6. Powell, Kalynda & Huxley, Elizabeth & Townsend, Michelle L, 2021. "Mental health help seeking in young people and carers in out of home care: A systematic review," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    7. Rishel, Carrie W. & Morris, Tracy L. & Colyer, Corey & Gurley-Calvez, Tami, 2014. "Preventing the residential placement of young children: A multidisciplinary investigation of challenges and opportunities in a rural state," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 9-14.
    8. Brown, Jason D. & Ivanova, Viktoria & Mehta, Nisha & Skrodzki, Donna & Gerrits, Julie, 2013. "Social needs of aboriginal foster parents," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 1886-1893.
    9. Pullmann, Michael D. & Jacobson, Jedediah & Parker, Elizabeth & Cevasco, Molly & Uomoto, Jacqueline A. & Putnam, Barbara J. & Benshoof, Trishia & Kerns, Suzanne E.U., 2018. "Tracing the pathway from mental health screening to services for children and youth in foster care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 340-354.
    10. Garcia, Antonio R. & Kim, Minseop & DeNard, Christina, 2016. "Context matters: The state of racial disparities in mental health services among youth reported to child welfare in 1999 and 2009," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 101-108.
    11. Siobhan M. Ryan & John W. Toumbourou & Anthony F. Jorm, 2014. "Factors Associated With Service Use for Young Adolescents With Mental Health Problems," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(4), pages 21582440145, November.
    12. Schneiderman, Janet U. & Smith, Caitlin & Palinkas, Lawrence A., 2012. "The caregiver as gatekeeper for accessing health care for children in foster care: A qualitative study of kinship and unrelated caregivers," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 2123-2130.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bernedo, Isabel M. & Salas, María D. & Fuentes, María J. & García-Martín, Miguel Ángel, 2014. "Foster children's behavior problems and impulsivity in the family and school context," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 43-49.
    2. Ruff, Saralyn C. & Harrison, Kristi, 2020. "“Ask Me What I Want”: Community-based participatory research to explore transition-age foster Youth’s use of support services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    3. Casanueva, Cecilia & Stambaugh, Leyla & Urato, Matthew & Fraser, Jenifer Goldman & Williams, Jason, 2011. "Lost in transition: Illicit substance use and services receipt among at-risk youth in the child welfare system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1939-1949, October.
    4. Berrick, Jill Duerr & Boyd, Reiko, 2016. "Financial well-being in family-based foster care: Exploring variation in income supports for kin and non-kin caregivers in California," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 166-173.
    5. Landers, Ashley L. & Bellamy, Jennifer L. & Danes, Sharon M. & White Hawk, Sandy, 2017. "Internalizing and externalizing behavioral problems of American Indian children in the child welfare system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 413-421.
    6. Wu, Qi & White, Kevin R. & Coleman, Kanisha L., 2015. "Effects of kinship care on behavioral problems by child age: A propensity score analysis," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 1-8.
    7. Bernedo, Isabel M. & Salas, María D. & García-Martín, Miguel A. & Fuentes, María J., 2012. "Teacher assessment of behavior problems in foster care children," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 615-621.
    8. Scott Jr., Lionel D. & Munson, Michelle R. & White, Tony, 2009. "Satisfaction with counseling among black males in transition from the foster care system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 161-168, January.
    9. Laurier, Catherine & Lafortune, Denis & Collin, Johanne, 2010. "Compliance with psychotropic medication treatment among adolescents living in youth care centres," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 67-73, January.
    10. Ralli, M. Asimina & Schiza Melpomeni & Tsiatsiou Alexandra, 2017. "Language and Psychosocial Skills of Institutionalized Children in Greece," The Open Family Studies Journal, Bentham Open, vol. 9(1), pages 76-87, August.
    11. Stone, Susan, 2007. "Child maltreatment, out-of-home placement and academic vulnerability: A fifteen-year review of evidence and future directions," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 139-161, February.
    12. Petra C Gronholm & Tamsin Ford & Ruth E Roberts & Graham Thornicroft & Kristin R Laurens & Sara Evans-Lacko, 2015. "Mental Health Service Use by Young People: The Role of Caregiver Characteristics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-16, March.
    13. Kang, Hyunah & Woo, Seokjin & Chun, JongSerl & Nho, Choog Rai & Chung, Ick-Joong, 2017. "Developmental outcomes among Korean adolescents in out-of-home care: A longitudinal study comparing kinship foster care and institutional care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 118-124.
    14. Ryan, Joseph P. & Hong, Jun Sung & Herz, Denise & Hernandez, Pedro M., 2010. "Kinship foster care and the risk of juvenile delinquency," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 32(12), pages 1823-1830, December.
    15. Goodman, Catherine Chase & Potts, Marilyn & Pasztor, Eileen Mayers & Scorzo, Dolores, 2004. "Grandmothers as kinship caregivers: private arrangements compared to public child welfare oversight," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 287-305, March.
    16. Ngwakongnwi, Emmanuel & Fradgley, Elizabeth & Quan, Hude & Lu, Mingshan & Cawthorpe, David, 2011. "Referrals, language proficiency, and enrolment for children's mental health services," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1994-1998, October.
    17. Barnett, Erin R. & Boucher, Elizabeth A. & Neubacher, Katrin & Carpenter-Song, Elizabeth A., 2016. "Decision-making around psychotropic medications for children in foster care: Perspectives from foster parents," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 206-213.
    18. Garcia, Antonio R. & Palinkas, Lawrence A. & Snowden, Lonnie & Landsverk, John, 2013. "Looking beneath and in-between the hidden surfaces: a critical review of defining, measuring and contextualizing mental health service disparities in the child welfare system," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 1727-1733.
    19. Carpenter, Sara C. & Clyman, Robert B., 2004. "The long-term emotional and physical wellbeing of women who have lived in kinship care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(7), pages 673-686, July.
    20. Maaskant, Anne M. & van Rooij, Floor B. & Hermanns, Jo M.A., 2014. "Mental health and associated risk factors of Dutch school aged foster children placed in long-term foster care," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 207-216.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:32:y:2010:i:5:p:691-697. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.