Wednesday, January 15, 2025
1/15/2025
Project Title: Youth Mental Health First Aid: Addressing Mercer County’s Continuing Need This proposed project to address youth mental health needs offers a comprehensive approach which relies heavily on collaboration with community partners. The project includes awareness, training, and referral education across a number of constituent groups (police, teachers, parents, anyone who works with youth) to reach the broadest possible audience, saturating the community with trained YMHFA responders as well as a cadre of trainers from various community partners to ensure continuity after the completion of this project. Our project goals include training 630 youth serving individuals for each year of this grant for a total of 3150 individuals trained across 5 years. Other goals include building the capacity of adults working with youth to appropriately detect and respond to children with mental health issues and expanding the integration of prevention services provided by agencies serving youth and their families. In addition, trainers will receive ongoing training related to cultural humility and best practices in training principles. Outcomes include increased interagency collaboration to serve more youth with mental health needs, increased referrals for services, increased understanding of the types of mental health services available, and decreased stigma associated with help seeking behaviors. A number of individuals will participate in train-the-trainer program to become YMHFA instructors. The Project Director and program staff will serve as a clearinghouse for mobilization of 20 certified YMHFA trainers in various locations throughout the catchment area, setting up logistical details and developing recruitment plans to ensure project goals and objectives are met. Data will be collected throughout the entire project for both formative and summative evaluation and will be related to the stated goals and objectives of the project. As data are collected, they will be analyzed and shared with stakeholders during monthly advisory board meetings and will include statistics related to the number of individuals certified as instructors and the number of adults trained in any given month, as well as the number of future YMHFA trainings scheduled. Data presented at monthly meetings will be used to inform training and recruitment procedures. The project is designed to address the needs of a city in distress, Trenton NJ, and surrounding areas as they grapple with high unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, mental and behavioral health needs, lower education attainment and high dropout rates. These issues influence the mental health needs of youth within the community, which has an impact upon nearly every aspect of life within the city.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).