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THE PERMANENT NNCPAP SITE IS TEMPORARILY DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE.  FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NNCPAP, PLEASE CONTACT AMELIA BUTTRESS.

National Network of Child Psychiatry Access Programs (NNCPAP)

Mission statement:

To promote the development, sustainability, and quality of child mental health and psychiatry access programs designed to address the mental health needs of children and adolescents within the primary care setting

Why is this network important?

  •  Throughout the country, there is a shortage of mental health providers, especially child psychiatrists.  Collaborative programs such as the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project (MCPAP) are a promising approach to leverage our existing supply of child psychiatrists to provide mental health services to children and youth.

  • The network will promote synergy, avoid duplication of efforts, and promote use of best practices within regional and state programs.  Through joint work and cross-program collaboration, we will have enhanced ability to identify the benefits of these programs and address challenges and problems quickly.

  • Through the resources established by the network, we expect that we will foster the development of consultation programs in areas that would otherwise have difficulty finding the resources to start or sustain them.

  •  The network supports the emerging “medical home” model, allowing most care to be provided in the relatively low-cost primary care setting.

  • The network promotes the reach of these programs to primary care practices throughout the country.

Proposed network functions:

  • Facilitate linkages among existing and emerging programs
  • Create and maintain a set of tools including:

    • A database/clearinghouse of consultation programs so that states/regions considering them can have greater information about the approaches utilized by other programs

    •  A toolkit for states/regions in the process of developing child mental health collaboration/consultation programs

    •  A recommended set of assessment measurements and data collection approaches that will assist new and existing programs in collecting data, demonstrating the quality and benefits of the services that they are providing and promoting

  • Consult with existing programs and those in their planning stages
  • Advocacy
  • Improving the access/consultation model through mutual evaluation and research

More information:

For more information about the National Network of Child Psychiatry Access Programs (NNCPAP), please email Amelia Buttress.