New project to fast-track ‘best spends’ on child mental health
A new Parenting Research Centre project will fast-track the design of models and practices that help professionals intervene early and effectively on child mental health.
The project is part of Emerging Minds: the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health. It will deepen understanding of evidence related to child mental health. This includes prevalence of mental health issues and risk and protective factors.
Also, it will identify the services most likely to have contact and offer support to families and children aged 0-12. This will allow Emerging Minds to offer workforce support to professionals most likely to see children at risk or showing early signs of mental health difficulties. Also, the project will use a collaborative approach with these services to design mental health practices they can apply within their everyday work.
Examining the evidence
“Our work will identify best spends and focus on the groups for which change will be the most significant,” said Parenting Research Centre Senior Practice Design Specialist Elly Robinson.
“We’re examining sources of evidence on what services come into contact with families and children aged 0-12. This includes professional type and characteristics, type of care offered and opportunities they have to impact on child mental health.
“This work will help us prioritise areas of focus for the National Workforce Centre. In addition, it will help ascertain effective methods of design that the workforce centre can use in the coming years.
“Ultimately, Emerging Minds will lead to a workforce better supported and equipped to deal with child mental health issues.”
Developing tools and resources
The project will see a suite of tools, resources and recommendations developed.
“We will work with a number of organisations and services using different methodologies to design practice responses that work for them,” Ms Robinson said.
“For example, we will engage in a bottom-up approach to understanding the needs of multidisciplinary teams in selected local health districts with a focus on collaboration. This will also help us design responses we can share with other, similar groups of professionals.”
The project will run until June 2019.
Learn more
- Read about the Emerging Minds project
- Visit the Emerging Minds web hub