Kentucky Partnership for Families and Children, Inc.’s (KPFC) mission is to “empower families with behavioral health challenges to initiate personal and systems change.” Building an infrastructure for a family and youth driven System of Care requires families and youth to have meaningful involvement within the Kentucky System of Care that fosters prevention, personal change in strengthening their advocacy and leadership skills, and opportunities to not only participate, but to have a real voice. Once families and youth understand their power for transforming Kentucky’s System of Care, their excitement and energy moves forward to strengthen the movement and toward systems change—the change to create a strong, viable, responsive System of Care in Kentucky.
KPFC’s twenty-one-year history includes an expanded family and youth movement infrastructure. There is expressed excitement from multiple child/family-serving agencies to collaborate with parents and youth as real partners to truly create a statewide System of Care. KPFC’s Peer Support Centers will provide peer support, leadership development and create opportunities for meaningful involvement in the child welfare agency and beyond.
KPFC will address the need for meaningful involvement and leadership opportunity for families and youth in the northeastern region through:
• Providing individual and group peer support services for 40 individuals per year.
• Building leadership skills of a minimum of 15 participants per year to share their lived experience perspective regarding family and youth driven within the Kentucky System of Care.
• Collaborating with a minimum of 5 Kentucky System of Care partners to identify opportunities for family and youth voice as equal decision makers.
KPFC continues to expand and strengthen the Kentucky System of Care infrastructure through the establishment of regional peer support centers that create opportunities for parents and young people with lived experience to partner with agencies at all levels in their decision-making processes and by preparing agency partners to not only welcome parents and young people’s voices and experiences, but to demand that they be part of the “way business is conducted” in Kentucky.
