November 2024Vol. 25, No. 9Building Bridges to Improve Mental Health

By Mary Wichansky, director, National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services

When children and families who have experienced the child welfare system address their mental health needs, they shouldn’t face insurmountable barriers that impede their ability to achieve good outcomes. Families should be able to receive services from a workforce with the knowledge, skills, and experience to effectively meet their needs. Mental health providers must be able to understand the impact of families' experiences with abuse, neglect, trauma, and loss, and their work must be culturally and linguistically responsive. Being skilled is an important part of the equation, but mental health services must also be accessible to those who need them. Positive mental health outcomes for children and families can be achieved when both child welfare and mental health systems work in partnership so a skilled workforce is available to all. We must transform our systems to better deliver what children and families need.

I’m excited to see so many people across the country showing a desire to learn more about developing a mental health workforce that is equipped to serve this population, strengthening collaboration between child welfare and mental health systems, and increasing equitable access to quality child welfare-competent mental health services. The National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services is committed to providing information and resources about evidence-informed practices and strategies you can use, upcoming learning and peer-to-peer connection opportunities, insights from our technical assistance (TA) work, and other relevant resources to support you in your work.

Whether you are looking for specific strategies and tips to use in your work or more indepth help to make transformational change, you have come to the right place! Funded through a 5-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Children's Bureau, our National Center provides a continuum of free services and resources. These can help you increase your system's capacity to provide accessible and culturally competent mental health services to youth and families who have been involved in the child welfare system through stronger, sustained collaboration between child welfare and mental health systems.

Our National Center's approaches leverage deep expertise and experience and strong relationships with all of our partnering organizations, modeling the collaboration between child welfare and mental health leaders and a commitment to racial equity and youth and family voices that we know are essential to moving this work forward.

We are excited to support states, tribes, and territories in multiple ways, such as providing expertise and evidence-informed training and universal TA services, facilitating active engagement in our Knowledge Hub to share best practices in child welfare and mental health, and delivering intensive and tailored onsite TA. I invite you to explore our website to access great information and find out more about how we can help you in your work. Please feel free to contact us to discuss how we can partner with you.