ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the obstacles to family responsiveness and to identify constructive efforts to strengthen the partnership between parents and professionals. Families of children with serious emotional or behavioral disturbances (EBD) have borne multiple burdens. Children with EBD and their families have multiple needs that bring them into contact with a variety of non-mental health systems of care, such as education, health, child welfare, and juvenile justice. Parents experienced difficulties not only with mental health professionals, but also with pediatricians, teachers, and other gatekeepers to the mental health system. While parents and other family members certainly may have personal needs that require therapeutic intervention, including those associated with the stresses of raising a child with EBD, it is inappropriate and demeaning to label family members as patients. Collaborative partnerships between family members and service providers have significant potential for long overdue reform at the individual child, agency, community, state, and national levels.
