Collective Impact on Prevention: Let's Talk About Children Service Model and Decrease in Referrals to Child Protection Services

Abstract

Background: Families with parental mental health issues often have numerous problems needing multilevel measures to address them. The “Let's Talk about Children Service Model (LT-SM)” is a community-based service approach aiming at collectively impacting population needs regarding child protection services. Three municipalities in the Raahe District (RD) of Finland requested implementation of the LT Service Model. This paper describes the model and first results. Methods: The LT Service Model connects relevant stakeholders with families and their social networks aiming at the shared goal of supporting children's everyday life at home, kindergarten, school, and leisure environments. Parents, teachers, and other caretakers are supported by LT interventions. An infrastructure for collaboration, decision making, monitoring, training, and feedback is established, embracing health, social and educational services, and other stakeholders. Referrals to child protection services were compared with national data before (2009–2013) and after implementation of the LT Service Model (2013–2016). Analyses were conducted using the joinpoint regression method. Results: There was a significant decrease in the underage population referred to child protection services in RD (AAPC = −6.9; p = 0.013) between 2013 and 2016, in contrast with an increased rate nationwide (AAPC = 1.9; p = 0.020). Conclusion: In the LT Service Model, prevention starts in children's everyday life as the uniting, common goal for multiple stakeholders and an integrated service structure is developed to support this effort. The first results are promising, showing an appreciable decrease in referrals to child protection services, although further research with longer follow-up and across other municipalities is needed.

Association between maternal and paternal mental illness and risk of injuries in children and adolescents: nationwide register based cohort study in Sweden

“…However, the extent to which these guidelines are implemented in practice is currently unknown and probably varies from region to region. Most importantly, future studies need to evaluate the implementation of such targeted home safety interventions in families with parental mental illness and identify the specific needs and experiences of these families 6061…”

Collective Impact Partnership and Backbone Organizations as Enablers of Children’s Well-Being

“…The second most common focus area of the reviewed CI initiatives is related to (2) supporting children's and families' health and psychosocial well-being, typically describing partnerships between various regional actors. Many of the CI initiatives in this category were related to supporting psychosocial well-being among families with children with various adversities such as homelessness and adverse childhood experience and factors such as parental mental health problems, poverty, and violence (Cox 2018;Cox et al 2018;Evans et al 2014;Cutuli and Willard 2019;Forstadt et al 2015;Cohen and Price 2015;Homel et al 2015, Niemelä et al 2019Terrile 2016;Wills et al 2019).…”

“…In this thematic area, partnerships included social and healthcare professionals as in the case of one CI focusing on crime prevention (Homel et al 2015) and another CI dealing with childhood trauma (Wills et al 2019). Other partners outside the traditional service providers included all available nongovernmental organizations like churches and NGOs (Niemelä et al 2019) and local libraries (Terrile 2016). All CI initiatives were related to psychosocial well-being and health, except for two (Terrile 2016;Cox 2018;Cox et al 2018) which were operated in multiple regions and included local partners.…”

Children of Patients Undergoing Psychiatric Treatment: An Investigation of Statutory Support Services After Referrals to Child Protection Services

“…Improving the possibilities-and obligations-of mental health services to offer support to COPMI would hence be in line with policy trends in other areas, such as school and family law sectors, where counselling and treatment services for at-risk children have been implemented over recent years (30,31). Another strategy would be more radical change to the infrastructure of the referral process such as the newly developed Finnish "Let's Talk about Children Service Model (LT-SM)" (32). Here, referrals concerning at-risk children are sent to a "one contact service" connecting relevant stakeholders such as mental health-and social services, kindergartens and schools who join together on a case-based collaboration around the family.…”