Meet Your Technical Assistance Coordinator
Gwen Palmer
Gwen Palmer is currently employed with the National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health on the Technical Assistance Partnership contract as a Technical Assistance Coordinator (TAC). She has worked with and earned the respect of national, state, and local program leaders, family members, youth, and children for more than 29 years. With those years of experience and an outstanding employment history with child-serving agencies, Gwen has navigated a career path through local family organizing, local- and state-level system of care development, and advocacy. She has many years of experience as not only a parent of a child with mental health challenges, but as a service provider, advocate, and liaison in the areas of mental health, education, child welfare, and juvenile justice.
More about Gwen
As part of the Technical Assistance Partnership, she provides technical assistance to system of care communities funded by the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program by consulting and facilitating customer-focused technical assistance (TA) to their individual system of care community. She also assists communities in developing, implementing a broad array of community-based, culturally competent, family-driven, youth-guided, and strengths-based services to improve outcomes for families and children with serious emotional disturbance.
Previously, Gwen served in the role as the Co-Family Involvement Resource Specialist with the Technical Assistance Partnership in the field of family involvement to provide comprehensive information, teaching and technical assistance to system of care communities. Gwen also cross-trained with other Resource Specialists so that they could identify and help grant communities develop state-of-the-art and promising practices that diverted children and youth from costly out-of-home placements; and provided technical assistance that guided the development and implementation of a broad array of strength-based community services while developing systems of care that address the mental health needs of children. Gwen had another role as an evaluation specialist with the National Federation's Family Leadership in Systems Evaluation.
She provided technical assistance to communities and family-run organizations on family leadership in systems evaluation, facilitated teleconferences with both families and professionals to allow the opportunity for peer-to-peer dialog and mentoring, gathered and shared information resources, and developed strategies to support family and youth involvement and partnership with professionals in evaluation efforts. She also assisted in the development of curriculum and other pertinent materials related to families in evaluation processes. She also presented at national conferences and authored tip sheets and other materials.
On a personal note, as a single parent, Gwen raised two sons, one with emotional challenges. She spent sleepless nights strategizing ways to navigate the systems that served her son. She developed and managed resources to raise her children alone in an environment of unconditional love and support which eventually led to both of her sons earning their Bachelor degrees and both are gainfully employed. Her son with the mental health challenges is an accountant with a city government and is very successful. System of care values and principles, with an emphasis on equal partnership and collaboration, worked in their lives!!