ADDRESSING THE BARRIERS TO MENTAL-HEALTH-SERVICES FOR INNER-CITY CHILDREN AND THEIR CARETAKERS

This paper will outline a series of three research studies meant to id entify factors related to child mental health service usage and barrie rs to help seeking for urban minority children and their caretakers. I n addition, this paper will describe the systematic development and ev aluation of a telephone intervention strategy aimed towards increasing overall attendance at initial intake appointments at an urban child s erving agency. The first study explores differences in demographic var iables, for two groups of children (n=450), those that came to an init ial intake interview and those that requested child mental health serv ices, but failed to come to any scheduled appointments. The second stu dy evaluates a telephone engagement intervention meant to increase ini tial attendance (n=54). Finally, the third study, more rigorously eval uates the impact of an intensive telephone intervention on initial att endance rates by randomly assigning families to the more focused telep hone intervention or a ''business as usual'' telephone screening (n=10 8).