Right support at the right time – Participant-oriented exploration of coordinated assessment and interventions for young people with neuropsychiatric disabilities within youth psychiatr

Research idea and purposeIncreasing poor mental health in young people and challenges in accessing timely and appropriate support represent significant challenges of today.

This is particularly relevant for children and youth with NP and their families (NP families), who often display complex support needs from Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (CAP) and social services.

Identified challenges in collaboration between these services, along with limited user involvement, implies risk of inefficiency in care and support processes, and inadequate interventions.

Consequently, there is a need for knowledge development to enhance multiprofessional coordinated processes of development and implementation of interventions, aiming to secure appropriate high-quality support for NP families.The purpose is to, through a process of co-creation of knowledge with NP families and professionals, develop a research project focused on exploring whether coordinated implementation of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) within CAP and social services has the potential to enhance involvement of NPF families and improve the development, implementation and follow-up of interventions for this target group.

Work plan, methods and project realisationThe research design is based on co-creation of knowledge through group discussions - workshops and service-user groups - involving professionals from CAP, social services, NPF families, and NPF interest organisations in Värmland.

Workshops focus on describing and analysing current implementation of ICF, and exploring the potential of coordinated implementation of the ICF across services.

The research proposal will be refined based on insights from workshops and further developed through a Delphi process involving professionals, interest organisations, and researchers (service – user group).

Societal relevance and utilisationThe applied person-centred approach, emphasising user involvement and interprofessional collaboration, has the potential to enhance professional competence development and improve development and implementation of support for the target group.

Beyond improving the quality of care and support, the expected knowledge production could lead to more efficient utilisation of societal resources.

The planning study provides a unique chance to design well-grounded research which can produce high-quality knowledge relevant to both society and NPF families in the present and future.