interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health and Developmental Disability Collaborative Action Plans (CAPs): For Use with the ChYMH-DD Assessment Instrument, (Standard English Edition), 9.3.0

The interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health and Developmental Disability (ChYMH-DD) Assessment System is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary mental health assessment system for use with children and youth between the ages of 4 and 18 years who have developmental disabilities for community-based as well as in-patient and residential services. The ChYMH-DD Assessment System assesses psychiatric, social, environmental, and medical issues emphasizing a child's or youth's functioning, with applications for assessing risk, planning individualized care, measuring outcomes, predicting resource utilization, and evaluating quality. Specific items in the ChYMH-DD Assessment System provide triggering algorithms for Collaborative Action Plans (CAPs) that flag children and youth with potential problems in need of further clinical review (for example, additional assessment, treatment, or recommendations).

The interRAI Collaborative Action Plans (CAPs) have been developed to incorporate evidence-informed practice and suggest recommended interventions that can be used if the presenting problem is confirmed. Each CAP provides a description of the clinical problem, specifications in trigger algorithms used to flag children and youth with the issue, background information related to current best practice evidence for the clinical problems, as well as questions to probe for a more detailed clinical review. The CAPs were composed based on a thorough review of the existing literature for best practices and were enhanced by clinical expertise. An international team of professionals with very specific areas of expertise were recruited for the development of each CAP.

Collaborative Action Plans assist the assessor in systematically interpreting the information recorded on the ChYMH-DD Assessment Form. CAPs are not intended to automate care planning; rather, they help the clinician focus on key issues identified during the assessment process, so that decisions as to whether and how to intervene can be explored with the young person and family.