Mental health service use of young people in child welfare services in Quebec, Canada.

Background: Youth involved in child welfare have high rates of mental health problems and are known to receive mental health services from multiple settings. Still, gaps remain in our understanding of service use patterns across settings over the course of youth's involvement with child welfare.

Objective: To examine the settings, reasons for contact, persons involved in initiating care, and timing of each mental health service contact for individuals over their involvement with the child welfare system, and to identify factors that predict multi-setting use.

Methods: Data on mental health service contacts were collected retrospectively from charts for youth aged 11-18 (n=226) during their involvement with child welfare services in Montreal, Quebec. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine predictors of multi-setting mental health services use (defined as ≥3 settings).

Results: 83% of youth had at least one mental health service contact over the course of their child welfare services follow-up, with 45% having multi-setting use. Emergency Departments were the top setting for mental health services. Youth with a higher number of placements and from neighborhoods with greater social and material deprivation were significantly likelier to use ≥3 mental health service settings over the course of their follow-up.

Conclusion: These findings suggest a need for enhanced collaboration between youth-serving sectors to ensure that continuous and appropriate mental health care is being offered to youth followed by child welfare systems. The relationship between placement instability and multi-setting mental health service use calls for specific policies to ensure that young people do not experience multiple discontinuities of care.