Improving permanency planning in families with HIV disease

This article describes two distinct service models developed for providing mental health and custody-planning services to families with advanced HIV disease or AIDS. Project Talk uses cognitive behavior techniques with groups of parents and their teenage children (ages 12 to 18). Project Care employs a psychoeducational approach to counseling mothers and children (ages 8 to 11) in their homes. While both models have a number of common characteristics, they also have unique strengths and limitations. Each is likely to play a role in providing services to a portion of the population facing the need to develop permanency plans for surviving children. Both models are being evaluated in separate longitudinal studies to assess the mental health outcomes of the children and the models' effectiveness in helping parents to plan for their futures.