Help-seeking steps and service use for children in foster care

Area of Science:

• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Health Services Research
• Social Work

Background:

• Children in foster care often experience significant mental health challenges.
• Understanding help-seeking behaviors and service utilization is crucial for this population.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe help-seeking steps and service-use patterns for school-age children in foster care.
• To examine moderators of access to mental health services, including sociodemographic, enabling, and child disorder factors.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from 302 randomly selected children (ages 6-12) in foster care.
• Employed two home interviews and one telephone teacher interview.
• Assessed psychiatric diagnoses, perceived need for services, and service utilization (mental health, special education).

Main Results:

• 80% of children received a psychiatric diagnosis; 43% of foster parents perceived a need for mental health services.
• Approximately 51% received mental health services and 52% received special education services in the past year.
• Factors such as age, ethnicity, foster parent education, placement history, benefits, caseworker visits, and disorder characteristics influenced service access.

Conclusions:

• Access to mental health services for children in foster care is influenced by multiple individual and systemic factors.
• Interventions targeting both caregivers and the broader system are necessary to enhance service accessibility.
• Further research should focus on developing and evaluating targeted interventions for this population.