The authors describe a research study that addresses a public health issue relating to community-based mental health services by aligning organizational priorities with five principles of effective service; they discuss their analysis of the Availability, Responsiveness and Continuity intervention and its impacts on youth outcomes; and they present their findings and conclusions.
The authors’ report on a research study in which their primary objective was to assess the effects of the Availability, Responsiveness, and Continuity (ARC) organizational intervention on youth outcomes and the mediating role of organizational priorities as a mechanism linking the ARC intervention to outcomes. ARC is designed to improve community-based youth mental health services by aligning organizational priorities with five principles of effective service organizations: mission driven; results oriented; improvement directed; relationship centered; participation based. For their research study, 14 community-based mental health agencies in a midwestern metropolis along with 475 clinicians and 605 youth (ages five to 18) served by those agencies were randomly assigned to the three-year ARC intervention or control condition. The agencies’ priorities were measured with the ARC Principles Questionnaire (APQ) completed by clinicians at the end of the intervention. Youth outcomes were measured as total problems in psychosocial functioning described by their caregivers using the Shortform Assessment for Children (SAC) at six monthly intervals. Results showed that the rate of improvement in youths’ psychosocial functioning in agencies assigned to the ARC condition was greater than the rate of improvement in agencies assigned to the control condition. The effect on youth outcomes was fully mediated by the alignment of organizational priorities described in the five ARC principles. The authors conclude that the ARC organizational intervention improves youth outcomes by aligning organizational priorities with the five ARC principles. The findings suggest that organizational priorities explain why some community mental health agencies are more effective than others. Publisher Abstract Provided