Statewide family network to enhance virginia?s capacity and infrastructure to be better oriented to meet the needs of children and adolescents with mental health conditions and their families. -…

Statewide family network to enhance virginia?s capacity and infrastructure to be better oriented to meet the needs of children and adolescents with mental health conditions and their families. - nami virginia's virginia family network (VFN) project will serve families with children and youth with serious emotional disturbance (SED) throughout the commonwealth. The goals of this project are: (1) to educate and connect families of children with SED to lessen isolation and strengthen a statewide support network; (2) to enhance and empower the parent voice in behavioral health policy and implementation by increasing educational and training programs and opportunities across the statewide family network and; (3) to increase family involvement in leadership roles through the implementation of family led programs and trainings to enhance access to family driven care. Through this project, we will serve an estimated 3,500 virginia parents, caregivers, children and youth of all demographic groups each year, for an estimated 10,000 individuals served during the three-year grant term. In order to achieve project goals, each year of the grant period, we will provide one parent institute, one family and youth leadership summit, two advance parent leadership trainings, two youth leadership trainings, ten peer led educational presentations for youth and/or parents, a respite program to provide support to at least eight families, one advanced parent education class and at least two parent/caregiver introductory workshops open statewide. Further, each year, we will ensure that a minimum of two in-person and one statewide online monthly support groups are available. We will support the training of eight family support or youth support partners, maintain a website, provide a resource library and manage a 1-800 number. Furthermore, we will translate one advanced training and one introductory workshop into spanish, hold quarterly technical assistance calls and webinars for family support partners, and regularly funnel information and opportunities to a network of trained parent and youth leaders available to serve on various committees. In addition, twice during the grant period, a parent or youth policy survey will be conducted, and we will attend conferences focused on family-driven care to facilitate discussion or staff a resource table when possible.