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I am a Youth, Parent or Caregiver

I am a Youth, Parent or Caregiver

The resources below are intended to support youth, parents, and caregivers. 

A peer with lived experience dedicated to supporting parents/caregivers who have children with serious emotional disturbance or

intellectual/developmental disabilities.

  • Youth Peer Support

A peer with lived experience dedicated to helping youth and young adults with serious emotional disturbance, specifically to enhance hope, confidence, self-advocacy skills and decision-making abilities.

  • Michigan Child Collaborative Care

A care model to increase access to mental health treatment for underserved children and adolescents and high-risk perinatal women in 83 counties in Michigan. The program includes:

  • “Just-in-time” phone consultation to primary care providers and tele-psychiatry consultation to children and adolescents and high-risk perinatal women.
  • Behavioral Health Consultants (BHCs) to assist with recruitment of primary care providers for enrollment in MC3, linking with the primary care providers to facilitate phone consultation with Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist as well as arrange for tele-psychiatry (assessment).
  • BHCs embedded in selected large primary care practices to assist with the implementation of standardized mental health screening and assessments; provide psycho-education to parents and youth; provide brief mental health interventions; and link the child/family to local resources as well as follow up referrals to behavioral health services.
  • Panel reviews for the larger primary care practices so that providers can get consultation from psychiatrists on multiple patients in a scheduled hour.
  • Webinars and live educational sessions for primary care practices based on their identification of topics of interest.
  • One collaborative effort to educate providers was the creation of a short video on how providers can engage with parents and youth when discussing behavioral health. This content for this video was created by a pediatrician and the executive director of the Association for Children’s Mental Health.
  • Members of both the Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) and Youth Advisory Committee (YAC) from the Association of Children’s Mental Health provided feedback on the video to ensure parent and youth voice were adequately captured. You can view the video here.

For more information about the Youth Peer Project or for information about how to bring Youth Peer Support to your community contact:  Kristina Dristy, Program Manager, Youth Peer Support and Parent Support Partner, kdristy@acmh-mi.org or 517-643-3314.