Barriers obstructing a preventive mental health approach

Abstract

This chapter considers some barriers which need to be overcome in order to implement early intervention when children are facing critical family change. It begins by explaining marketization as it applies to children's access to services. It then discusses the shortcomings in Whitehall's capacity to view the mental health needs of children and their families as a whole. These include policy making that is short-termist, reactive, and uncoordinated; more reward for ministers and civil servants in ‘rising to the occasion’ than preventing such occasions arising in the first place; and most government responses are vertical (i.e. carried out in single departments) when most the key problems faced by government are horizontal (i.e. affect a number of different departments). The chapter then covers how to overcome shortcomings in established professional modes of thinking.