Mark Pancer

Youth residential mental health care is often a last resort after a long time searching for help. Despite engaging with residential care, moving from residential mental health programs to life in the community, many youth still confront disturbing prospects. Incorporating vignettes, chapter summaries, as well as theory and evidence in fields such as education, juvenile justice, child welfare, independent living, supporting families, and positive youth development, this book proposes a template that is both credible and feasible for improving community living outcomes for youth leaving residential mental health programs.

The Highfield Community Enrichment Project is one of eight demonstration sites for the ‘Better Beginnings, Better Futures’ initiative, a comprehensive, community-driven program dedicated to the prevention of children’s mental health problems in Ontario and the promotion of child, family, and community wellness. Drawing from this multi-method, longitudinal research project, authors Geoffrey Nelson, S. Mark Pancer, Karen Hayward, and Ray DeV. Peters have written Partnerships for Prevention, providing insights and lessons on how prevention programs can be planned, implemented, and managed in a low-income, multicultural context with a high degree of community involvement. The authors demonstrate not just that the program works, but how it works, and in so doing make a contribution to theory, research, and practice in primary prevention and mental health promotion for children. Partnerships for Prevention provides a great deal of knowledge that will be of interest and use to policy-makers, program planners, practitioners, and community residents, who wish to create prevention programs.