Meeting the Family court's Need for mental health and human services: A comparison of direct service and community organization approaches

Abstract

The family, juvenile, and domestic-relations courts face America's most pressing social problems without the requisite mental health and social services. Two alternative approaches to this dilemma—the direct service approach, which encourages the expansion of court-related mental health services, and the community organization approach, which urges the stimulation of community agencies to better serve the needs of the court population—were implemented by an experimental family court mental health service in an urban setting. Analysis of this experience suggests that there are general principles favoring the community organization approach.