The proposed Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research (K24) focuses on promoting the mental health of low-income, urban children and their families by involving parents as active collaborators in the service delivery process, as well as the design, implementation and testing of child mental health service innovations. Goals of the award include: 1) to provide mentorship to clinical scientists, particularly those interested in examining child mental health issues from a family perspective and using collaborative research methods to craft research questions and field studies that are set in """"""""real world"""""""" settings; 2) to develop a series of interventions that focus on involving urban parents as treatment collaborators in the care of their children based upon maximum input from the parents, as well as service providers and to test the impact of these engagement interventions on: a) attendance at mental health appointments, b) involvement of parents in the child's treatment; c) parental and youth investment in the treatment process and effort expended to achieve goals; d) child mental health symptoms and functioning and; 3) to receive consultation from senior mental health services researchers, advanced statistical consultation, and substantial input from those overseeing the New York State and City public mental health systems, parent and mental health advocates. Three separate studies are proposed. First, a study examining the development, feasibility and outcomes associated with a psychoeducational multiple family group engagement/orientation intervention will be conducted. The intervention will be developed in collaboration with parents, providers and researchers in one inner-city mental health clinic (Step #1) and then tested in 11 outpatient mental health sites across New York City (Step #2). A second study examining the development, feasibility and outcomes associated with a school-based mental health-focused """"""""parent-to-parent"""""""" outreach intervention will be conducted. This intervention involves training existing school-based family outreach workers and parent advocates to facilitate the relationship between parents and mental health staff (Step #1) and then testing the impact of this intervention in 14 school-based mental health sites (Step #2). Third, a study examining the development, feasibility and outcomes associated with a """"""""parent to parent"""""""" training model to increase parental collaboration with Early Intervention mental health providers for parents of youth displaying early mental health and developmental disabilities will be developed in a similar 2-step process. The proposed Midcareer Award will support a social work investigator who is committed to research activities that engage parents as active collaborators in order to develop empirically informed, family-focused interventions that can be delivered in """"""""real world"""""""" settings (mental health clinics, schools, community-based settings) by existing providers (mental health clinicians, parents, parent advocates, health care staff) in inner-city mental health sites. In addition, this award will support an investigator that is committed to providing mentorship to clinically oriented researchers to advance urban child mental health services research. ? ?
