December 2005

Organizing for System of Care Transformation: Building a National Voice for Children’s Mental Health

Question: Our family organization recently contracted to partner with the system of care in our area to lead the efforts in transforming systems of care into more family-driven entities. Our family organization is a newly developed Federation of Families Chapter and we are looking for information and guidance to get us started with how to approach transformation and family-driven care through policy work. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Answer: The language that characterizes and defines transformation and consumer- and family-driven systems of care comes from the goals and recommendations of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.. Understanding these goals and recommendations is an important place to start. It will become important to continually educate the public and policy makers about the recommendations of the President’s New Freedom Commission report and new strategies for transformation and implementation.

There is a great deal of work being done to define consumer and family-driven care. The National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, the National Youth Board, and SAMHSA are working with youth, families, and system of care partners across the country to work on definitions and tools for making systems of care family-driven and youth-guided. The websites listed below provide information about the progress that these organizations have made. Share these definitions and tools with state policy makers and in your communities.

• http://tapartnership.org/advisors/family/Family-driven_11.pdf
• http://tapartnership.org/learning_opp/Orientation/resourcedocuments/Foundation.pdf

Your organization will want to develop a unified voice of youth, families, concerned individuals, and agencies. These partners can work together as a cohesive coalition to send clear messages that will support your system of care’s transformation efforts. In order to send a clear message, these partners must hold ongoing training opportunities for everyone involved in order to:

• increase advocacy and leadership skills;
• gain knowledge of the current service delivery laws, policies and regulations;
• increase understanding of state legislative process;
• learn new effective and evidence-based culturally competent practices that support positive outcomes for children, youth, and their families.

Partnerships between youth, families and family organizations, state and local policy makers, agencies, boards, and other community members are extremely important for producing positive policy changes. Effective strategies for building these partnerships include:

• Recruit diverse youth, families, and family organizations to become equal participants on policy and decision-making structures, such as state mental health councils, system of care governance boards, subcommittees, etc.
• Establish special work groups to maintain family-driven and youth-guided principals and craft actual policies, regulations, and practices. These policies, regulations, and practices will need to be evaluated on a regular basis and refined for quality assurance.
• Invest in ongoing youth, family, and professional partnership training in order to attain equitable and effective partnerships.
• Hold meetings between youth, families and family organizations, and the administrators of collaborating child and family serving agencies to discuss the implementation of policies and practices and its impact on children, youth, and families.
• Share valuable system of care evaluation data and the success stories of youth, families, and family organizations to help demonstrate the impact of policies and practices on children, youth, and families.

The Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health’s Policy and Research Program is a great resource to help you get started. The Federation of Families’ Web site, “Family Leadership through Policy” page http://ffcmh.org/policy.htm will connect you to a great deal of information about family-driven policy. The Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health offers Targeted Technical Assistance to help family organizations and system of care communities with their policy work. Assistance can include policy formulation and implementation, decision-making, leadership development, and strategic planning. For more information about the Federation of Families’ Policy and Research program, contact Pat Hunt, Director of Policy and Research at pdh@megalink.net. Below is a Federation of Families Tip Sheet Involving Families in Policy Group Work to support your efforts towards transformation and becoming family-driven and youth-guided.

Involving Families in Policy Group Work