A Core Competency Perspective on Family-based Intervention for Child and Adolescent Mental Health

The training of mental health practitioners has seen a growing focus on core competencies in recent years in response to the need for guidance in the implementation of evidence-based treatment of mental disorders. This chapter outlines the aims and advantages of a competency-based approach and describes existing models of competencies in the treatment of adults, children and adolescents. For the most part existing models have focused on cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) to the exclusion of other evidence-based approaches and have focused on individual therapy at the expense of treatment in which family members are actively involved. We present a novel model of the therapist competencies needed for the effective delivery of evidence-based family interventions for common child and adolescent mental health disorders. The proposed framework provides a potential foundation for curricula planning and assessment in practitioner training, and stands to inform evidence-based practice guidelines and future research into professional development