Lay summary
The long-term costs of mental illness in children and adolescents are considerable and long lasting, yet services often do not deliver the best available treatment because of practical difficulties with current evidence-based therapies (EBTs). MATCH is a new flexible modular system that combines EBTs for common mental health problems. Training is relatively brief. Our main objective is to improve the clinical outcomes of children and adolescents attending mental health services in New Zealand, thus impacting on the burden to society of long-term mental illness. We will carry out a rigorous real world clinical trial to test whether training in MATCH results in the delivery of more EBT and better mental health outcomes for children and adolescents than usual care. Our study design ensures that we can show effectiveness separately for Maori and Pacific children. If results are positive we will implement national training using existing expertise at the Werry Centre