About the Initiative

 
 

With workforce shortages and the impact of COVID-19 on our communities' mental health, the need for expanding access to culturally responsive, child mental and behavioral health services is immense.

CARE for Kids & Families is a new project led by a growing coalition of collaborators and facilitated by UW’s CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health Policy that works to address that need while centering community knowledge and lived experience. This initiative has been funded through Washington State legislative proviso.

Project Goal

To outline a vision for a community behavioral health system in Washington State that is more culturally responsive, equitable, and effective in the services it provides to children and families. 

Project Aims

  1. Provide organizational support to public behavioral health agency leaders;

  2. Develop a training strategy to increase culturally relevant and evidence-informed treatment;

  3. Support an expansion of the workforce to include non-masters level providers with lived experience to deliver these treatments.

For more information, scroll down to view our recent community forum.

How You Can Get Involved

Broad community input and participation is key to the success of this project!

Depending on your time capacity and level of interest, we have many ways for you to get involved. We’re particularly interested in connecting people with lived experience, work experience, or other forms of expertise in behavioral health care, racial equity, and/or promoting health equity.

Stay in the loop!

Sign up for regular updates below. We’ll keep you informed on how things are going and share exciting project milestones and any future opportunities for participation. (We respect your time and inbox—we’ll never email you more than once per week.)

Join our Community Sounding Board!

Would you like to share feedback on the project on an ongoing basis? Want to make sure your voice is reflected in the project outcomes? Join our Community Sounding Board—an easy way for those involved with or interested in behavioral health to inform this work through regular interactions with our team including opportunities to win door prizes and access to exclusive content.

In just a half an hour a month, you can help make culturally responsive mental healthcare more effective and accessible in Washington State. Active participation in the Community Sounding Board comes with a host of benefits including quarterly giveaways and invitations to special events. Plus, the first 100 people to sign up will receive a special gift. All are welcome!

Commitment level: low
Time investment: about 30 minutes per month; invitations to biannual open forums

Help Spread the Word!

Everyone in Washington State deserves access to culturally responsive behavioral healthcare. That’s why we want as many people as possible to know about this initiative! Are you a part of any networks that should know about this work? Can you connect us with others who may want to get involved? Consider becoming a Project Amplifier.

Email Communications Specialist, Rachel Porter, at rachport (at) uw.edu to learn more.

Commitment level: medium
Time investment: up to you!

Contact the Project Team

Do you have other ideas of how you may want to be involved with this work? Simply want to learn more, or have a question for our team? We’d love to hear from you. Please reach out to Program Operations Specialist, Anna Duncan, at aeduncan (at) uw.edu to discuss.