The Interrater Reliability of a Coding System for Measuring Mental Health Professionals' Decisions and Actions.

Objective: The clinical decisions and actions of evidence-based practice in psychology (EBPP) are largely underspecified and poorly understood, in part due to the lack of measurement methods. We tested the reliability of a behavioral coding system that characterizes a flow of interrelated activities that includes problem detection and prioritization, intervention selection and implementation, and review of intervention integrity and impact.

Method: The context included two publicly funded youth mental health service organizations located in geographically distinct and underresourced communities in the U.

Statement on the effects of law enforcement in school settings.

School-based law enforcement (SBLE) have become increasingly common in U.S. schools over recent decades despite the controversy surrounding their presence and lack of consensus around their associated benefits and harms.

Identifying abolitionist alignments in community psychology: A path toward transformation.

Psychology is grounded in the ethical principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, that is, "do no harm." Yet many have argued that psychology as a field is attached to carceral systems and ideologies that uphold the prison industrial complex (PIC), including the field of community psychology (CP). There have been recent calls in other areas of psychology to transform the discipline into an abolitionist social science, but this discourse is nascent in CP.

A Multidimensional Examination of the Measurement of Treatment Engagement: Implications for Children's Mental Health Services and Research.

Objective: The gap between rates of children's mental health problems and their participation in services highlights the need to address concerns related to engagement in mental health services more effectively. To identify, understand, and resolve engagement concerns appropriately requires effective measurement. In this study, we employed a multidimensional conceptual framework of engagement to examine the measurement of engagement in intervention studies focused on improving children's and/or families' engagement in services.

Engaging Parents in Mental Health Services: A Qualitative Study of Community Health Workers' Strategies in High Poverty Urban Communities.

Empirical engagement-promoting strategies in child and family mental health services have been identified largely within the context of clinic-based services delivered by mental health professionals. However, the magnitude of unmet youth mental health need necessitates expanding the scope of mental health services, and the associated engagement strategies, beyond traditional models and service providers. The present study aimed to extend our understanding of engagement strategies to a school-based mental health service model, using a community health worker (CHW) workforce implementing an early intervention program with parents and school-aged children (K-4) in high poverty urban communities.

Trajectories of Parent Participation in Early Intervention/Prevention Services: The Case for Flexible Paraprofessional-led Services.

: This study examined parents' participation in a school-and home-based prevention and early intervention service model designed to promote positive parenting and parent involvement in schooling. : Paraprofessionals (32) employed by four social service agencies provided parenting support and education through parent groups, home/community visits, case management, and individual contacts to African American and Latino/a families in urban high-poverty communities (375). In this open trial, we identified longitudinal trajectories of parents' participation across all service formats over the course of a full school year using latent class growth models, then examined group differences in baseline child and family characteristics, participation in specific service formats, and parenting skills practice across the year.

Collaboration with Urban Community Stakeholders: Refining Paraprofessional-led Services to Promote Positive Parenting.

This paper describes the process of a community-academic partnership to navigate implementation challenges for a school-based service model led by paraprofessionals to promote positive parenting in high poverty urban communities. We describe the process by which we (a) identified implementation challenges, (b) sustained a university-community collaboration to redesign the paraprofessional service model, and (c) assessed the feasibility of the new model involving four social service agencies in 16 schools with over 600 families. The structure and process of the collaboration and refinement are described with attention to who was best positioned to engage in the collaboration and how the partnership worked to balance scientific rigor with responsiveness to paraprofessional workforce strengths.

A qualitative study to explore paraprofessionals' role in school-based prevention and early intervention mental health services.

This study explored the role of paraprofessionals within a school-based prevention and early intervention program to promote children's engagement in learning and positive parenting practices. Study aims were designed to understand how paraprofessionals perceive their role in high-need communities and how they define their work within schools. Two focus groups were conducted with school family liaisons (SFLs) during the 2015-2016 school year.

Redesigning community mental health services for urban children: Supporting schooling to promote mental health.

Objective: This study examined a school- and home-based mental health service model, Links to Learning, focused on empirical predictors of learning as primary goals for services in high-poverty urban communities.

Method: Teacher key opinion leaders were identified through sociometric surveys and trained, with mental health providers and parent advocates, on evidence-based practices to enhance children's learning. Teacher key opinion leaders and mental health providers cofacilitated professional development sessions for classroom teachers to disseminate 2 universal (Good Behavior Game, peer-assisted learning) and 2 targeted (Good News Notes, Daily Report Card) interventions.

Future Directions for Dissemination and Implementation Science: Aligning Ecological Theory and Public Health to Close the Research to Practice Gap.

Dissemination and implementation science (DI) has evolved as a major research model for children's mental health in response to a long-standing call to integrate science and practice and bridge the elusive research to practice gap. However, to address the complex and urgent needs of the most vulnerable children and families, future directions for DI require a new alignment of ecological theory and public health to provide effective, sustainable, and accessible mental health services. We present core principles of ecological theory to emphasize how contextual factors impact behavior and allow for the reciprocal impact individuals have on the settings they occupy, and an alignment of these principles with a public health model to ensure that services span the prevention to intervention continuum.

Youth Mentoring Relationships in Context: Mentor Perceptions of Youth, Environment, and the Mentor Role.

Youth mentoring is primarily understood as a relationship between mentor and mentee, yet mentors often enter into home, school, and other community settings associated with youth they serve, and interact regularly with other people in mentees' lives. Understanding and mentors negotiate their role as they do remains underexplored, especially in relation to these environmental elements. This qualitative study drew on structured interviews conducted with professional mentors ( = 9) serving youth at risk for adjustment problems to examine how mentors' perceptions of their mentees and mentee environments informed their sense of how they fulfilled the mentoring role.

Usual care for clinicians, unusual care for their clients: rearranging priorities for children's mental health services.

Garland et al.’s comprehensive review of the state of clinic-based community-based mental health care for U.S.