Issue Brief #1 Identifying Organizational Factors Associated with Reducing Mental Health Disparities: A Conceptual Framework

In order to be effective, a system of care for children with serious emotional disturbances and their families must be accessible to the local community. Communities facing disparities in access to care and wishing to reduce those disparities must begin by increasing their understanding of the populations they serve and the existing community and organizational barriers. Increasing access to services for culturally and linguistically diverse children and their families is particularly challenging and requires attention to the influence of culture on the help-seeking process and the design and delivery of mental health services (Hernandez, Nesman, Isaacs, Callejas, & Mowery, 2006). The Accessibility of Mental Health Services study was designed to identify and operationalize culturally competent organizational practices that can be implemented within systems of care to improve access to services for diverse children and their families. In this issue brief we will present a conceptual model that defines organiza-tional cultural competence in terms of increased access and reduced disparities. For our purposes, access to mental healt