The State of Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OMHAS) has partnered with NAMI Ohio and YouthMOVE Ohio to create a Youth and Family Advisory Council in your community. This council will work together to advise and support the work of the ENGAGE 3.0 grant. This includes the development of Mobile Response teams to help youth and families in crisis in your community.
Our team, composed of leaders with their own personal lived experience, can attest to the importance of youth and family voice in making services successful. For this reason, we would like to invite you to participate in our Youth and Family Advisory Council. You will work closely with other youth and families, receiving support and training from the team leaders to help implement this work. You will receive compensation for your time and participation as a member of the advisory council.
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What is ENGAGE? ENGAGE stands for: Engaging the New Generation to Achieve their Goals through Empowerment. The purpose of the ENGAGE System of Care Expansion Implementation grant (from SAMSHA) is to expand the system of care framework to build services to help Ohio’s youth and young adults, ages 14-24, with behavioral health needs in crisis, including co-occurring disorders and multi-system needs.
The ENGAGE plan focuses on 5 main goal areas: 1) Infrastructure, 2) Youth and Family Voice, 3) Treatment, Care and Home, 4) Education and Employment and 5) Awareness and Connections.
What is an Advisory Council? An Advisory Council is a team of people, youth and family members, who use their lived experience and personal opinions to help develop and implement programs or policies. This advisory group will help give feedback and input to state and county partners who are developing mobile response plans for youth and families experiencing behavioral health crisis.
Additionally, this advisory group can help by identifying and recruiting families and youth who may want to be certified as peer supporters to work directly with the families who will be served by this program.
Who should participate?
- Youth and young adults who have direct lived experience with a behavioral health condition.
- Family members who have experience helping their Youth and Young Adults in transition (YYAT), ages 14-24, navigate behavioral health services.
Advisory members be trained in leadership and advocacy. Members will help in project planning, will pass along their knowledge of the services they received, and will help recruit their peers to participate in training and other opportunities. All advisory members will receive training and support from family and adult leaders assigned to this project.
How To Become a Peer Supporter
Application
Testimonials
MRSS Staff was so helpful, and she was so sympathetic, and she connected very well with my daughter. And it was something
that was really important for me, to be able to have someone that would connect well with her and that my daughter could trust.
For me, my family and I have never been through anything like this before and I would say there’s still a stigma on occurrences like this. The thing that I appreciate is that no one treated my child like there was something wrong with her. Nobody looked at me and my family as if we did something to cause it. A lot of times, I think people are leery or hesitant because they don’t want to be looked at like the problem. What I love is that it was personalized. It was individualized, compassionate.
They are amazing. They come in with an open mind. They’re understanding. They jump right in and do what they can do to
assist with the child and with the family. They’ve always been pleasant, everyone that’s come out and I think they’re amazing