No abstract

<p>Research on mental health problems of children and young people in residential child care shows a high incidence. One of the strategies to improve the interventions is the use of tools of detection, so that biases in the referral to treatment could be avoided.</p><p>The objective of this study was to analyze the level of concordance between the information given by the young people and their social educators, using the CBCL (in case of educators) and YSR (for adolescents) in a sample of 138 young people aged from 11 to 18 who were in residential care. Also differences between the group of young people referred to mental health treatment and those without it were analyzed.</p>Results show low and moderate levels of concordance between the information given by the young people and their educators, with higher levels of agreement in externalized problems, in a similar way as the results found in research with samples of parents and children. Score differences are discussed according to the literature review, concluding that adults distinguish the clinical and non-clinical group clearly, but young people do not display significant differences. These findings indicate the need for giving more relevance to self-reports, to the adolescent own perspective.

The aim of this study was to analyze the prevalence of mental health disorders in children living in residential care and their use of therapeutic services, including the relationship between these factors and social-family and intervention process variables, as well as the relationship among the disorders identified by professionals and the detection of disorders by means of a screening instrument. We studied a sample from the Autonomous Community of Extremadura in Spain made up of 264 children ages 6 to 18 years. Data collected from residential care workers on the children’s characteristics and the existence of disorders and possible treatments were used, as well as the Child Behavioral Checklist as a screening instrument. In addition, the case social workers provided information on social-family and intervention process variables. Results show that 26% of the children in residential care were receiving or had received treatment for mental health disorders. Seventeen percent of the total presented mental disability, and in half of these cases, they were also being treated for mental disorder. The screening test, however, detected that cases with clinical range accounted for 44% of the children and that there was considerable bias in relation to referrals for treatment.