Need for youth welfare services following child and adolescent psychiatry treatment- a descriptive analysis

Abstract

Cooperation between health and youth welfare services plays a prominent role in the psychosocial healthcare of children and adolescents with mental disorders. The need analysis presented here measured how many children and adolescents engaged youth welfare services before and after inpatient or daycare treatment. The number of completed treatments from 36 Bavarian daycare and inpatient child and adolescent psychiatric clinics were recorded over a period of 6 months. Besides sociodemographic and diagnostic data, information was collected about indicated and subsequently realized measures of youth welfare following clinical and day care treatment. 33 %of the clinically treated children and adolescents participated in a youth-welfare measure after psychiatric treatment. In the run-up to clinical treatment, 38 % of the treated children and adolescents had engaged services of youth welfare. Half of the children and adolescents contacted both youth welfare services as well as child and adolescent psychiatric services. The residential setting of youth care is of major importance to the cooperative treatment. The provision of both youth welfare services and child and adolescent psychiatry treatment is usually not a matter of going from one system to another, but rather consists of different constellations of complex processes of mutual assistance. The goal is to carry out a structured survey of the common clientele and to develop a crossover system and common care structures in order to improve the overall cooperation.