Assessing Youth and Family Needs

Although the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-Fourth Edition-Text Revised (DSM-IV) is considered the standard for making clinical diagnoses, assessment procedures should also be conducted to better understand a child's needs and issues. Practitioners should conduct a strengths-based assessment before matching youth with specific evidence-based interventions. To develop the most comprehensive picture of a child's presenting problems, it will be valuable to collect input from the child's parents/guardians, teachers, and other service providers who have worked with the child.

Evidence-Based assessment is just beginning to receive attention in the field. To ensure a good match between the youth's condition and treatment, you should include evidence-based assessment as part of your practice guidelines. Using practice friendly assessment strategies (self-administered, efficient problem-solving scales), and promoting consensus between youth, family and the provider will improve the likelihood of a good match between an evidence-based treatment and a youth's diagnosed condition (Weisz, 2006).

Vandiver (2002) identified seven essential steps to follow when applying evidence-based practices with clients:

• Conduct a biopsychosocial assessment
• Arrive at a diagnosis and select specific diagnostic guidelines
• Identify problems
• Develop goals and targeted areas to change
• Create an intervention plan
• Establish outcome measures
• Evaluate

You should be prepared to provide concrete examples of how the treatment process begins and what it will be like, as well as informing youth and families about how they will know when there is improvement. Reviewing the list of questions within the Youth and Families section on Questions to Ask Providers will assist the family in preparing for treatment, continuation of treatment, and end of treatment.

Helpful Links:

• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention within the US Department of Justice has a Resource Guide for practitioners who conduct assessments and screening, which is useful for practitioners interested in different screening and assessment instruments.



• The Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths is a useful assessment tool to assess and guide service delivery for children. This tool can be administered repeatedly to assess how the youth is progressing during treatment.



• Refer to the Florida Mental Health Institute's publication, "Using the CAFAS to Promote and Evaluate Evidence-Based Interventions and Implement Systems of Care for Youth with SED" to learn more about assessment using the Child and Adolescent Functional and Assessment Scale.



• For more information on evidence-based assessment, see the special issue of the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, which contains information about assessment instruments and protocols to use with a range of disorders: The Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (2005) Volume 34, Number 3. (Please note that you will have to purchase individual articles or the entire issue from the publisher.)

References:

Springer, D. W. (2004). Treating juvenile delinquents with conduct disorder, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, and oppositional disorder. In A. R. Roberts & K. R. Yeager (Eds.). Evidence-Based practice manual: Research and outcome measures in health and human services (pp. 263-273).

Vandiver, V. L. (2002). Step-by-step practice guidelines for using evidence-based practices and expert consensus in mental health settings. In A. R. Roberts & G. J. Greene (Eds.). Social workers' desk reference (pp. 731-738). New York : Oxford University Press.

Weisz, J. (2006, September). Evidence-Based practices in child and adolescent mental health: Recent news and my ESP on EBPs. Paper presented at the meeting of the Children's Array of Psychiatric Programs, Portland Oregon.