C3 - community connect to care - the C3 - community connect to care project will provide mental health awareness training for teachers and school staff, counselors, professors, parents/caregivers, and…

C3 - community connect to care - the C3 - community connect to care project will provide mental health awareness training for teachers and school staff, counselors, professors, parents/caregivers, and staff from other community partners working with youth or young adults. The population of focus includes children, adolescents, and young adults in the chicago metropolitan area with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use, self-injury, suicidal ideation, or other mood disorder. The C3 project will implement a five-year mental health awareness training program with the goals of 1) developing an extensive network of trained staff and other constituents from community partner agencies to identify children, adolescents and young adults in need of mental health services and 2) provide referrals for treatment and prevention services to amita behavioral health provider sites. The training curriculum will use the youth mental health first aid (YMHFA) evidence-based practice (EBP) as the foundation to develop its curriculum, as well as components of other EBP education models. While the YMHFA is designed to teach skills to assist youth ages 12 - 18, the C3 project will adapt the model, so that information is provided for participants working with children ages 8 - 11 and young adults ages 19 - 24. Four training session will be offered every month - two in-person with 30 participants and two virtual due to the pandemic with 20 participants. All participants will be trained to identify general mental health issues and serious mental health disturbances including self-harm, suicide or violence among children and adolescents, and young adults. Training participants will also learn how to use skills in crisis prevention and response, DE-escalation, and making behavioral health services referrals, including learning how to fill-out the referral form when appropriate. The first two years of the project will focus on amita health's northwest region service area (suburban counties), the next two years in the city of chicago, and the last year in the south region (suburban counties). C3 project objectives include training approximately 4,200 community residents, with 600 trained the first year and 900 trained each subsequent year. In addition, we estimate that 560 referrals for behavioral health care services will be made over the five-year project period. In addition, an improvement in the knowledge of the learning modules among all training participants using a pre- and pot-test assessment will be demonstrated. The alexian brothers health system D/B/a presence alexian brothers health system is a legal entity of ascension health and was created through a merger of alexian brothers health system and presence health. IT is a part of amita health, a joint operating company managed by two sponsors - adventhealth and ascension health.