This article explores the results of a qualitative inquiry into guilt, blame, and shame as experienced by parents of children with co-occurring mental health and substance use challenges. These interviews represent both the lived experience of parents, as well as the perspective of clinicians who work with these families. The parentclinician alliance is taken as a central context for considering how these experiences may affect the dynamics of the helping relationship. Analyses of these results suggest that guilt, blame, and shame are often experienced by parents and have important implications for engagement and therapeutic processes. Parents associate feelings of blame with interactions from a number of helping professionals and connect personal characteristics, parenting behaviors, and relationship issues with experiences of shame and guilt surrounding their children's behavioral health challenges. Finally, the information that is shared across these interviews is used to guide the development of a number of practice guidelines for social workers who work with families of adolescents that experience co-occurring mental health and substance use issues.

The authors, representing community practitioners, faculty, students, and administration, collaborated to produce guidelines for university-community partnerships that reflect social work’s commitment to social justice in practice, education, and research. The respective experiences and voices of the authors contribute to a wider perspective on the explicit social justice implications of partnership formation for community-based participatory research, which is a vision shared by many disciplines. These guidelines introduce a communication outline that may augment the creation and maintenance of thriving university-community partnerships across multiple disciplines that promote social justice.

This study describes a qualitative inquiry–informing program development in a maternal and child home visiting program. Low-income women's perceptions of the meaning and experiences of depression were ascertained through focus groups and interviews. Simultaneously, the study examines staff member perceptions and roles related to depression. Specific findings from clients and staff reveal culturally situated beliefs about depression and stressful life events; comparing and contrasting these beliefs offers a novel perspective on identification and intervention for maternal depression. This study offers a foundation for a translational research agenda that will be used for program and policy development to enhance mental health services situated within maternal and child health home visiting programs.

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