Bridging the service gap: co-producing an intervention framework for rural children in families with severe mental illness

This study confronts the persistent fragmentation of services for children in rural Chinese households affected by severe parental mental illness. Through a collaborative knowledge production process in a rural county of Southwestern China, we integrated frontline social work wisdom with academic enquiry to develop a whole-process intervention framework. Organised around a recursive cycle of identification, intervention, follow-up, and exit, and animated by practice principles of flexibility, family-centredness, repetition, and comprehensiveness, the framework seeks to strengthen service continuity, systemic coherence and local responsiveness. Situated within integrated care theory, systems thinking, and the innovative care for chronic conditions model, our analysis pushes beyond social-worker-dependent, episodic interventions towards integrated, systemic support. We advocate for cross-sector collaboration, frontline capacity building, family empowerment, and the cultivation of a triangular support ecology connecting communities, service teams and families.