Evaluating a Social Work Engagement Approach to Involving Inner-City Children and Their Families in Mental Health Care

Abstract

This article will focus on increasing the ability of social workers to provide mental health services to urban, low-income children and their caretakers. A conceptual model for understanding the process of engagement will be presented. Further, a protocol for training social workers to conduct first interview/engagement interviews and the results of a study evaluating its impact will be highlighted. One hundred seven children and their families were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: (1) first interviewers trained in specific engagement skills, and (2) other therapists within an urban mental health agency. Of the 33 children assigned to first interviewers, 29 (88%) came for a first appointment and 97% (n = 28) of those returned for a second appointment. In comparison, of the 74 clients assigned to the routine first interview condition, 47 (64%) came for an initial appointment and only 83% (n = 39) returned for a second appointment. The average length of treatment during an 18-week study period for first interview subjects was 7.1 sessions, as opposed to 5.4 sessions for the comparison group. The applications of this model for social work education are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 104 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.