- Title
- Working with families with parental mental health and/or drug and alcohol issues where there are child protection concerns: inter-agency collaboration
- Creator
- Coates, Dominiek
- Relation
- Child & Family Social Work Vol. 22, Issue S4, p. 1-10
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12238
- Publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Child abuse commonly occurs within the context of multiple risk factors, in particular parental mental health and/or drug and alcohol problems. As no one agency can address all these factors, inter-agency collaboration is paramount to the protection of vulnerable children, especially in families with a complex array of problems. This paper outlines a range of recommendations to improve collaboration between child protection workers and mental health/drug & alcohol (MH/D&A) clinicians from the perspective of Keep Them Safe-Whole Family Team (KTS-WFT) clinicians. Taking referrals from child protection, the KTS-WFT offers interventions to families with parental MH/D&A problems where there are child protection concerns. As part of a larger evaluation of a KTS-WFT site, 10 KTS-WFT clinicians participated in in-depth interviews. Analysis of the interviews identified collaboration with child protection as a primary theme. Participants reported a number of barriers to effective collaboration; in particular, participants reported challenges with information sharing and confidentiality, inconsistency in terms of the level and style of collaboration, tensions between the different theoretical paradigms that underpin practice for MH/D&A clinicians vs. child protection workers, and insufficient clarity around processes and expectations. Consistent with the identified barriers, primary recommendations to improve collaboration were to improve information sharing, overcome silo ways of thinking, manage risk together more consistently, and develop consistent processes and expectations.
- Subject
- child protection; children; mental health; alcohol; drugs; parents; service evaluation
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1384870
- Identifier
- uon:32127
- Identifier
- ISSN:1356-7500
- Rights
- This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Coates, D. ( 2017) Working with families with parental mental health and/or drug and alcohol issues where there are child protection concerns: inter‐agency collaboration. Child & Family Social Work, 22: 1– 10, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/cfs.12238. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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