Friday, November 22, 2024
11/22/2024
Tarzana Treatment Centers, Inc. (TTC) will provide Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training to youth-serving staff at community-based agencies and other interested community members, including teachers and parents, in Service Planning Areas (SPAs) 1 & 2 in northern Los Angeles County (LAC). TTC’s population of focus will be primarily Black and Latino youth ages 12-17 in SPAs 1 and 2 whose families experience lower educational levels and higher rates of poverty, overcrowded housing, and food insecurity than other racial/ethnic groups in the community. As a result, these youth and their families have greater difficulty access health care, including mental health services, than their white counterparts, despite having greater mental health needs. Local community health needs assessments point to social stigma and a lack of mental health providers serving low-income families as key barriers. TTC’s proposed project will address these service gaps by increasing awareness of mental health disorders and available mental health resources in the community and improving referral pathways to mental health and other services for low-income, primarily Black and Latino, youth ages 12-17. The overall purpose of TTC’s Valley First Aiders (VFA) Project is to improve targeted youth’s access to needed mental health services by providing mental health awareness training and improved referral protocols to a wide range of community members, including health and social service providers, teachers, youth coaches, school personnel, parents, and other concerned community members in LAC SPAs 1 and 2. The project’s specific goals and objectives will be accomplished by: 1) strengthening or forging new partnerships with youth-serving community-based organizations, schools, and other relevant agencies in the targeted communities to promote the importance of mental health awareness training; 2) conducting targeted organizational and community outreach to recruit individuals to be trained in YMHFA; 3) developing materials and specific referral protocols for trained First Aiders to use when assisting youth in need of services, especially those with severe mental illness (SMI), serious emotional disturbance (SED), or co-occurring substance use disorder (COD/SUD); 4) conducting YMHFA training with a minimum of 180 unduplicated individuals in Year 1 and 200 unduplicated individuals annually in Years 2-5 for a total of 980 unduplicated individuals trained during the 5-year project; and 5) tracking the number of youth encounters, referrals, and linkages to services made by trained First Aiders each year. Outcomes include increased knowledge of mental health disorders and available community resources among trained individuals, increased confidence to appropriately and safely respond to youth in distress among trained individuals, and an overall increase in enrollment in youth mental health services at TTC each year. As one of the largest publicly funded integrated behavioral health providers in LAC, TTC will also provide referred youth to trauma-informed, culturally responsive community-based mental health services with an emphasis on prevention and early intervention. TTC also has the capacity to provide specialized mental health services for youth with SMI, SED, or COD/SUD.
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).
