Professional family peer advocates are increasingly employed by public mental health systems to deliver family-to-family support that reduces barriers families face in accessing children's mental health care. These services, however, are neither uniformly available nor standardized. This pilot study describes the process, content and context of…

We conducted a review of empirically based prevention programs to identify prevalence and types of family support services within these programs. A total of 238 articles published between 1990 and 2011 that included a family support component were identified; 37 met criteria for inclusion. Following the Institute of Medicine's typology, prevention…

A comprehensive review of structured family support programs in children's mental health was conducted in collaboration with leadership from key national family organizations. The goals were to identify typologies of family support services for which evaluation data existed and identify research gaps. Over 200 programs were examined; 50 met…

We describe the development of a parent empowerment program (PEP) using a community-based participatory research approach. In collaboration with a group of dedicated family advocates working with the Mental Health Association of New York City and state policy makers, academic researchers took an iterative approach to crafting and refining PEP to…