Dossett, Kimberly W. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8765-3642
Reid, Graham J.
Article History
First Online: 25 October 2019
Compliance with Ethical Standards
:
: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
: All procedures performed in the principal study involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of Western University and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Western University’s Research Ethics Board provided approval for the study.
: Western University’s Research Ethics Board provided a waiver for informed consent in the principal study for the following reasons. The principal study did not involve direct contact with children, rather it obtained data from over 5 000 children’s charts across six children’s mental health agencies in Ontario. Data were abstracted for children who had their first visit to agencies in 2004, 05 or 06. Identifying information was removed by each agency prior to to data abstraction. Analyses based on a previous study are about 47% of patients have no visits on record for the subsequent 3 years after the year in which they first contacted the agency. This means many children for whom data are being abstracted are no longer involved with the agencies. Thus, no continuing relationship exists. In addition, many families will have moved since their last visit and the agency would not have record of a new address making it impossible to contact them.