15581-m-nanninga

SUMMARY 148 The general aim of this thesis is to enhance understanding of children’s and adolescents’ enrolment in psychosocial care, including the association of this process with outcomes of care. This increased understanding may be of use for research and education, but also for daily practice and policy making. Chapter 1, the introduction to this thesis, provides background information on psychosocial problems of children and adolescents, psychosocial care, and the process of care enrolment. Furthermore, we explain our research approach and introduce the Collaborative Centre on Care for Children and Youth (C4Youth), and the longitudinal prospective cohort study TakeCare. At the end of Chapter 1 we present the research questions. These are the following: 1. How many parents and adolescents in the community sample expect barriers when considering seeking psychosocial care for the child? What types of barriers are most frequently expected? And which child and family characteristics are associated with these expectations regarding barriers to care? 2. What are the psychometric properties of the Barriers to Treatment Participation Scale-Expectancies (BTPS-exp) in terms of internal consistency, scale structure, parent-adolescent agreement and validity? 3. What are determinants of children’s and adolescents’ enrolment in and use of psychosocial care as reported in the literature? 4. Are family social support and parenting skills, two key aspects of the child’s social environment, associated with children’s and adolescents’ enrolment in psychosocial care? And, if so, what role do children’s psychosocial problems play in these associations? 5. Are the types of problems upon enrolment, i.e. child, parenting and family problems, associated with enrolment in different types of psychosocial care? And do care types differ in outcomes (of care duration and problem solution) after three and twelve months? Expectations in the community regarding barriers to psychosocial care In Chapter 2 we describe our study of the views of the community sample on their expectations of barriers to psychosocial care, regarding four barrier types: stressors and obstacles competing with treatment, treatment demands and issues, perceived irrelevance of treatment, and problematic relationship with the therapist. These expectations were measured with the ‘Barriers to Treatment Participation Scale- Expectancies’ (BTPS-exp), of which the psychometric properties were examined in Chapter 3.