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The Handbook of Child and Adolescent Systems of Care is a groundbreaking, comprehensive handbook that presents the latest thinking in the field of child and adolescent psychiatry. It reveals how physicians, psychologists, therapists, social workers, educators, and other youth development workers have come to realize that the best way to help kids is not in isolated doctor/patient treatment rooms. Instead this book advocates community-based systems of care within an interagency integration of services based on a client-centered and family empowering orientation. This collection of expert research and clinical application represents the latest development in the growing field of community child psychiatry. Included in the many invaluable contributions are chapters on:

• developmental and cognitive psychology in Systems of Care (SOC);
• neurobiology and prevention in SOC;
• use of psychopharmacology in SOC;
• family and community-based interventions;
• working with culturally diverse populations, youth in juvenile justice, and child welfare;
• school-based services, partnerships amongst parents, consumers, and clinicians;
• outcomes in SOC-and other major issues.

"This is a rich resource for mental health professionals and others who work with seriously emotionally troubled children and their families and distills the most hopeful lessons from two decades of children's mental health reform. It provides multiple perspectives on systems change, balancing principles and clinical insights with compelling lessons from real world efforts that can serve as a map and inspiration for others."

Jane Knitzer, National Center for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, and author, Unclaimed Children