This revised small grant proposal from a first-time investigator describes a study designed to investigate the validity and usefulness of a rapid assessment instrument (RAI). Already employed within child welfare agencies across Tennessee, the Shortform Assessment for Children (SAC) is designed to provide an effective, easy-to-use measure of children's mental health which can be used to improve decisions regarding children's services and residential placements. Although longer, more comprehensive measures of children's mental health are available, child welfare workers and many other child care professional, working in the field are faced with a variety of constraints such as inadequate training and time which limit the use of these more comprehensive measures. This is particularly troublesome given the fact that mental health problems are prevalent among children within the child welfare system. Additionally, research suggests that little or no attention is given to a child's mental health status when decisions are made regarding services and placements.
The specific aim of this proposal are to evaluate the SAC which was designed to be easy to administer, easy to interpret, psychometrically sound, and useful to child welfare workers for improving service and placement decisions. Responses to the SAC will be gathered from parents and teachers for a sample of children entering the custody of the child welfare system. Alternative measures of children's mental health status will also be collected for validation purposes. Additionally, data over 6 months will be gathered for these children to document successes and failures of services and placements. Multivariate analyses will be conducted to investigate the SAC's ability to predict placement failure when the lack of fit between a child's placement and their mental health status suggest an inappropriate placement.
