Our Mission

Connect youth, ages 12-25, and their families to mental health supports before the crisis. Mobilize community stakeholders, service providers, schools, and caregivers to establish priorities and set goals, in order to create a coordinated and comprehensive system of care focused on early intervention, prevention and education. [view our committees]

THE COMMUNITY ISSUE

The Community Issue

Early intervention resources are limited and there are many barriers to access regardless of ability to pay for services. There are significant gaps and a lack of coordination in youth mental health services and as a result, many youth and families are not able to access resources when they are struggling which often leads to unnecessary crisis. Parents and youth often isolate because of the shame and stigma associated with mental health. Parents from all socioeconomic levels deserve to have an environment where they can be open and honest about their child’s struggles.

The Santa Barbara community needs more comprehensive youth mental health services which include access to psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists. With programs that do exist, there are often waiting lists and we have youth and families that are not able to get support when they need it. There are very few programs giving parents the tools they need to support their youth struggling with mental health or addiction issues.

We have youth that are sent out of the county and state to receive services through wilderness programs, residential treatment, and therapeutic boarding schools. We have families driving out of the county in order to find adequate psychiatric support. These are costly alternatives for families and they add many more stressors with potentially negative impacts. A common theme for students in recovery is loneliness when they transition home from programs. Schools, providers, parents, and youth need to understand the pitfalls and successes that accompany the process of integrating back into their families and communities.

Our resource directories and support lines are fragmented and do not serve everyone. Conversations with multiple providers have identified a lack of coordination and follow up when referring families for services. We need to collect data and understand the barriers to access.

YOUTHWELL STRATEGIC FOCUS

Strategic Focus

The YouthWell Coalition strives to improve outcomes and affect systemic change, improve communication and increase transparency amongst stakeholders. The Coalition serves as an autonomous body that addresses the urgent need for ongoing, coordinated youth mental health care so that families can access and receive services. The Coalition’s focus is to stay educated on the issues, learn from other communities, and serve as a communication hub by continuously convening stakeholders, gaining consensus on priorities, and using evaluation tools to improve collaborative efforts related to youth mental health.

The YouthWell Coalition is working to develop an effective community based mental health strategic plan for youth overall wellbeing in South Santa Barbara County. The plan serves as a guide and includes the initiatives and goals for each committee. Each initiative requires further development by the YouthWell Coalition Committees and key community stakeholders, including the gathering of baseline information, establishment of targets, and identification of funding needs. The plan incorporates our community’s teen suicide prevention efforts to move away from crisis, and includes education, prevention and intervention tactics that comprehensively provide a safety net for youth, ages 12-25. Making solid connections through warm handoffs for youth and parents, despite the stressors of facing mental health, will increase the quality of life for families and reduce the stressors.

VIEW FULL STRATEGIC PLAN & INITIATIVES >

YOUTHWELL GUIDING VALUES

Guiding Values

Integrity: We will be transparent and honest in our work together as a collaborative.

Collaboration: We believe that mental health is a community issue and we value the partnership and commitment from parents, students, schools, county, service providers, faith-based organizations, law enforcement, funders, and community to work together towards long-term solutions. We are committed to a shared vision and will take a leadership role in expanding partnerships, and acknowledge ownership of all the outcomes. We will work to build trust amongst agencies and encourage cooperation.

Equity: We believe all youth should have access to high quality, community-based, integrated mental health services regardless of ability to pay. We are committed to implementing strategies that are inclusive of all youth and aspire to alleviate any barriers that prevent access to support services in order to ensure the quality of, access to, and cultural competence of services. We will engage youth and parents to gain a better understanding and wider diversity lens of the issue.

YOUTHWELL COMMITTEES & COMMUNITY PARTNERS

Goals • History • Accomplishments

The YouthWell Coalition formed in June 2016 with key community stakeholders coming together to start the discussion and address the mental health gaps in services for students and their families in Southern Santa Barbara County.

2018-2019 • PHASE 3 • GOALS

MISSION: Connect youth, ages 12-25, and their families to mental health supports before the crisis. Mobilize community stakeholders, service providers, schools, and caregivers to establish priorities and set goals, in order to create a coordinated and comprehensive system of care focused on early intervention, prevention and education.

2017-2019 • PHASE 2 • ACCOMPLISHMENTS

2017-2018 • PHASE 2 • The YouthWell Coalition saw the need to create smaller working committees and develop a leadership structure in order to move beyond discussion. Phase 2 with the support of the Cottage Health Grant, provided an opportunity to establish leadership structure, committees, and develop shared responsibility for the success of the Coalition’s work. Initiatives were outlined, and commitments were established from key stakeholders.

It was agreed that the Mental Wellness Center act as the Coalition “fiscal agent”.

For the past two years, YouthWell has worked to support the youth mental health partners in the community for the benefit of youth,12-25, and their families. As relationships coalesce, the YouthWell partners have benefitted most from being able to optimize their work both on and off campus and leverage their youth services through stronger collaborations.

We continue to focus on improving connections between stakeholders in order to create systemic change on prevention and early intervention efforts. In 2018, we were able to formalize several committees to begin to address our initiatives. We currently have a Steering committee (7 members), Youth Services committee (30 members), and Outreach and Education committee (22 members) that have been meeting regularly to move this work forward. We have 59+ committed stakeholders.

In addition to improving communication, identifying gaps in services, and working on more effective relationships with the schools, we have also done the following...

2017 • Other Community Work being done…

In June of 2017, County of SB Dept of Behavioral Wellness, SBUSD, and SBRN put together a Community Contagion Intervention and Response Plan. With support of the Bower Foundation and other funders, they brought Dr. Robert Macy, President of Int’l Trauma Center, and his team to do an assessment and provide trauma response & psychological first aid (PFA) to school counselors, coaches, and mental health professionals.

In 2017, the Mental Wellness Center provided Mental Health First Aid training at the SB Libraries, to teachers at SBUSD, and for the Teen Coalition participants as well as YWC students and parents.

In September, 2017, [1] Several partners including SB Public Libraries, What is Love, and the Youth Wellness Connection hosted a community dialogue workshop for parents and teens around 13 Reason's Why, on Suicide, Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, and Bullying Prevention. [2] SB Response Network hosted community film screening and Q&A…“An Evening of Resources & Hope, Let’s Talk About Suicide”.

In October, 2017, Bridges to Resilience hosted their annual conference focused on Building a Trauma-Informed and Resilience-Focused Community with a focus on ACEs. Purpose Statement: Conference seeks to engage a variety of agencies and individuals who interact with children, youth and families on a daily basis; to deepen the conversations about trauma-informed care and share practical information that can guide our approaches.

2016-2017 • PHASE 1 • ACCOMPLISHMENTS

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

2016-2017 • PHASE 1 • The YouthWell Coalition formed in June 2016 with Rachael Steidl convening key stakeholders in the community to come together to start the discussion and address the mental health gaps in services for students and their families in Southern Santa Barbara County. Phase 1 was a one-year process that built connections and trust between stakeholders while exploring the challenging issues surrounding youth mental health in our community. We redefined “underserved” to include all youth since mental health is nondiscriminatory.

Ongoing meetings with service providers, funders, parents, school administration, Board of Supervisors representatives, and others were coordinated to gain a better understanding, increase communication and encourage more transparency.

The Coalition successfully worked together and identified gaps in services, barriers to access and an understanding that there is limited access regardless of ability to pay for services. With programs that do exist, there are often waiting lists which means students and families are not able to get support. There was consensus that we need to increase training, education, and outreach, expand services and make them accessible to all students struggling with mental health issues.

The Coalition met 6 times between June 2016 and June 2017 at the Santa Barbara Foundation.

The Mental Wellness Center provided lunches for the meetings in year one.
Approximately 50 individuals participated in the YouthWell Coalition meetings.
Organizations included the Santa Barbara & Carpinteria Unified School Districts, law enforcement, SBCC, Westmont, UCSB, multiple agencies, Santa Barbara County Department of Behavioral Wellness, Cottage Hospital, SB Neighborhood Clinics, Therapeutic Educational Consultant, and parents.

In August, 2016, Rachael Steidl and Annmarie Cameron attended the Adolescent Mental Wellness Conference hosted by Stanford to learn more about how Palo Alto and other communities have been addressing similar issues.

In June, 2017, the Santa Barbara Foundation provided funding for the Coalition to host Denise Gunn, principal at Gunn School and Mary Gloner, executive director of Project Safety Net Coalition to speak about how they implemented change in the Palo Alto school district. They have been changing the culture around mental health through curriculum, campus clubs, high school paper, campus wellness clinics, and in the community. Approximately 56 attended including funders, school district staff, teachers, school resource officers, PTSA, CBO’s, SB County Behavioral Wellness, and Cottage Health.

In Dec, 2017, Dr. Zev Nathan worked with the YouthWell Coalition and the Mental Wellness Center and invited Dr. Steven Adelsheim, Director, Stanford Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing to speak about the headspace model.

Positive changes started happening as connections were made and agencies found ways to collaborate…

The Mental Wellness Center (MWC) launched SPOT parent support groups to begin giving parents a place to connect and learn tools to better support their teens. SBPal stepped in as a partner by providing the Teen Center for meetings so that parents had a neutral meeting space.
The MWC and Rachael Steidl partnered on a youth project aimed at reducing stigma on campuses. They launched the Youth Wellness Connection Club at SMHS in 2016 modeled after the SBCC Wellness Connection founded by Roxane Pate. The YWC expanded to SBHS, DPHS, CHS and Alta Vista Middle College in 2017. The Youth Wellness Connection Council launched as a program of the MWC in 2017 to provide more in-depth training and education to better prepare students to lead their campus clubs.

Strategic Plan

This Strategic Plan is a working draft and a result of the work that was done the past two years, 2016-2018, during Phase 1 and 2 and has involved input from many of the key stakeholders committed to supporting youth mental wellness. It will be revised and adapted by the Coalition Committees. This is an aggressive 3-year strategic plan designed to make an impact on youth mental health. It will require a strong coordination of efforts amongst each committee and its members.

YouthWell will address each initiative with these questions... Does the strategy mesh with existing ones in the community? Does the strategy reflect goals and objectives of the coalition? Do the initiatives represent a best or promising practice? Is the strategy culturally appropriate? What barriers may stand in the way of carrying out this strategy? Is the strategy cost-effective? How will success be measured and evaluated?

INITIATIVES...

How do we effectively connect families to mental health support services?

[1] How do we effectively connect families to mental health support services?

Map and evaluate our existing youth programs, parent support, and referral process.
- Determine where we need to expand, collaborate and educate.
- Develop a better understanding of what is available to both MediCal, low income and private pay youth and their families. Research models that allow both MediCal and private pay insurance.
Develop a protocol for resource and referral that provides a warm-handoff and ensures access to care.
- Identify 1 crisis & compassion phone line, 1 text line, and 1 resource directory.
  Expand SAFTY to be both a crisis and compassion hotline/warmline.
- Create a response system that fosters communication and cooperation across agencies.
- Identify one agency to manage an online universal database (online service directory) of resources related to Youth Mental Health to include both private sector and public agency service providers.
- Create a Youth Resource & Referral list that includes all school-based agencies and the services they provide making it easier for counselors and parents to navigate rather than multi-flyers. Update annually.
Improve coordination of data collection and shared evaluation.
- Create a multi agency project to collect data on the referral process when youth are referred elsewhere.
- Explore options around data collection and referrals in order to develop systems that allow for warm handoffs which create an accountability process through the transfer of service provider responsibility. Provide mental health data and information to other community groups with overlapping goals.

How do we increase services, improve coordination of providers, and ensure cultural competency?

[2] How do we increase services, improve coordination of providers, and ensure cultural competency?

How do we reduce stigma and shame and promote institutional change in our community?

[3] How do we reduce stigma and shame and promote institutional change in our community so that families feel comfortable asking for help?