Family involvement in a community-based mental health service for children and adolescents: A case study

It is a generally accepted assumption that the mental health of children and adolescents is best served if the context in which they live is taken into consideration. Therefore, interventions should be population-based and located in the community. "Pro Mente Kinder Jugend Familie" is a community-based non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to fostering the positive development of children and adolescents with mental health problems. It consists of an integrated network of different service domains. A central issue of this NGO is to provide support for children/adolescents and their families, although each of the different service domains tries to reach this goal in its own way. The purpose of this article is to illustrate, with the help of a case study: (1) how organizations can review the current state of their interventions (here family involvement) to analyse where improvement may be needed; and (2) the kinds of steps which can be taken, should a need for improvement be indicated. Within the framework of quality assurance, group discussions on "family involvement" were conducted in order to assess the corresponding goals, interventions and pitfalls and to gather ideas for potential improvements. Each service domain summarized the main results of their discussions, and these reports were subjected to a content analysis. The results showed that a broader discussion concerning the organization's main goals with regard to "family involvement" was needed, as was improvements of the interventions taken to reach these goals. A road map depicting the next steps planned, in the sense of organizational development, is discussed.