Expanding youth mental health coalitions across idaho through education and advocacy - idaho federation of families plans to impact idaho's mental health crisis through a project titled expanding…

Expanding youth mental health coalitions across idaho through education and advocacy - idaho federation of families plans to impact idaho's mental health crisis through a project titled expanding youth mental health coalitions across idaho through education and advocacy. This project will support youth, young adults, parents, and caretakers in becoming effective change agents who are skilled to influence policy in support of youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED) and to work in the industry as peer support providers. Coalitions across idaho will be strengthened and united in common action towards reducing service gaps, of which community-based services for moderate and intensive mental health needs is primary. The promotion of evidence-based practices will also be a priority. As a result of these efforts, disparities will be less extreme, and idaho's yes system will continue shifting towards the parent-driven, youth-guided perspective IT is court ordered to operate from since the jeff D. Lawsuit settlement of 2018. The state of idaho is 83,570 square miles of which the majority is frontier and rural territory. The population is 1.84 million people of which 25% (460,000) are under the age of 18 years. We are one of the most sparsely populated states in the united states. Idaho is designated as a health provider shortage area by the health resources and services administration. Workforce shortages are a primary barrier to mental health care across all regions of idaho. Cultural diversity is low in idaho but slowly increasing with the 2020 non-white population of idaho growing from 16% in 2010 to 21% in 2020. The idaho department of health and welfare estimates there are 20,100 children with serious emotional disturbance (SED) in idaho as of 2021. That is 22.9% of idaho's population under 18 years. That may be low since in a recent 7 month window 11,672 idaho youth accessed mental health services. Given other statistics in idaho, such as our youth suicide rate which is almost double that of the average rate across the U.S., IT becomes obvious that idaho has among the worst youth mental health crises in the U.S. Today. Idaho families suffer greatly due to the lack of community-based services for youth with SED. Frequently, families IFF supports, whose youth need a high level of care, are unable to access the moderate to intensive levels needed in their community, region or even statewide. We have too few psychiatric hospitals, 1 prtf for teen girls and very few intensive outpatient programs. Youth with increasing needs for higher levels of treatment end up out of state or staying at low levels of care that do not match their acute need. This results in mental health crises for which there is no coordinated crisis response system. Through the advocacy and education efforts of this project we plan to increase community-based services in idaho by a total of 10% statewide for youth with moderate and intensive level needs by the end of year 3. This will result in a workforce increase of family peer support and respite workers of 25% and will impact approximately 2000 youth with better access to community services.