Making Links: Guidelines on Service Co-ordination for Children and Young People with Severe Mental Health Problems
Interdepartmental Working Party on Mental Health Services for Children, Young People and their Families, known as the Making Links Working Party - October 1997
Date of publication: November 1997
Foreword
The Making Links Guidelines describe how effective service coordination can be developed in each community between specialist mental health services, and services provided by the Education and Social Welfare sectors.
Service coordination means collaboration, cooperation and joint planning between the agencies and services involved with children and young people. We believe that everyone who works with children and young people is responsible for making sure that the services and support they provide are jointly coordinated around the needs of the individual child or young person and their family or whänau.
The Government has identified the mental health needs of Mäori children and young people as a key area for service development. These Guidelines discuss service coordination to meet the needs of Mäori.
We are committed to seeing service coordination developed at the local level by those who are working with young people at risk in their community. These Making Links Guidelines form part of a wider national strategy to improve services for children and youth at risk through collaboration between the sectors. This strategy is part of the Government’s Strengthening Families initiative. Effective practice models are being developed and implemented progressively throughout the country. The Making Links Guidelines will be absorbed within these models as they are established.
The strategy means that all those working with children and young people will increasingly be involved in service coordination. You will be hearing a lot more about this over the coming year. The key principles for implementing service coordination are contained in these Guidelines.
Dr Karen Poutasi
Director-General
Ministry of Health
Dr Ngatata Love
Chief Executive
Ministry of Maori Development
Howard Fancy
Secretary for Education
Ministry of Education
Margaret Bazley
Director-General
Department of Social Welfare
Background
The Guidelines on Service Co-ordination for Children and Young People with Severe Mental Health Problems have been developed by the Interdepartmental Working Party on Mental Health Services for Children, Young People and their Families. The Working Party released its report, entitled Making Links 1 , in July 1996. Making Links discusses the need to develop agreed systems of interagency coordination in service delivery to children and young people with severe mental health problems.
Specifically, Making Links identifies:
- the need for a high-level intersectoral commitment to the principle of cooperation and collaboration between sectors in their involvement with each child or young person and their family
- the need for structures and processes at an operational level to aid the management of multi-sector interventions in line with this principle
- the need for each sector to gain an understanding of the differences in ways of operating that exist between the sectors
- the need for each sector to see coordinated service delivery as core business
- the need for each sector to give consideration to specific purchase arrangements covering the coordinated management of multi-sector interventions
- the desirability for each sector to give consideration to the coordinated purchase of services in order to provide for flexibility in interventions with children and young people with severe mental health problems.
Making Links: Report of the Interdepartmental Working Party on Mental Health Services for Children, Young People and their Families. Volumes 1 and 2. Ministry of Health, 1996. Copies of the report are available from the Support Officer, Mental Health Services, Ministry of Health.
Purpose of the Guidelines
The purpose of the Guidelines is to establish key principles for service coordination and, using these principles, to provide a guide to the development of a local interagency protocol on service coordination.
These Guidelines focus specifically on children and young people with severe mental health problems but could be applied more broadly to all children and young people with problems requiring coordinated care and support from more than one agency. Similarly, while the Guidelines do not specifically extend to sectors outside Health, Education and Social Welfare (for example, the Police and non-government agencies), they could be adopted by other sectors wishing to formalise a coordinated approach to multi-agency service delivery with Health and/or Education and/or Social Welfare.
Document availability
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Updated 14 November 1997 |