Fostering Psychotropic Medication Oversight for Children in Foster Care: A National Examination of States' Monitoring Mechanisms.

To describe state responses to psychotropic medication safety concerns among children in foster care, this study proposes a taxonomy for state-level psychotropic medication monitoring mechanisms and highlights state variations. Seventy-two key informants, representing state child-serving agencies within the 50 states and DC, completed semi-structured interviews. We employed modified grounded theory to develop the taxonomy, and then generated state-specific summaries that were validated by key informants. Nationally, 88.2 % of the states employed at least one of seven mechanisms. For the most frequently implemented mechanisms (collegial secondary review, prior authorization, database review), over half were implemented between January 2011 and July 2013.

Evidence Use in Mental Health Policy Making for Children in Foster Care.

Considerable attention is being given to the use of research evidence to inform public policy making. Building upon Weiss's model of research utilization, we examined the types and uses of evidence that child welfare administrators used in response to federal policy reforms requiring psychotropic medications oversight for children in foster care. Participants relied on a range of "global" and "local" evidence types throughout the policy development phase. Global research evidence was used to raise awareness about problems associated with psychotropic medication use. Local evidence helped to contextualize concerns and had problem-solving and political uses. In most states, policy actions were informed by a combination of evidence types.