Two Feathers Project Aware will promote the healthy social and emotional development of school-aged AI youth and prevent youth violence in school settings through collaborative partnerships with schools, tribal education, and behavioral health program using a tiered behavioral health related promotion, awareness, prevention, and intervention activities in Humboldt County, California.
Two Feathers Project Aware will develop sustainable infrastructure for school-based mental programs and services collaboratively with Two Feathers-Native American Family Services' tribal behavioral health program, Hoopa tribal Education, three Local Education Agencies -- Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified, McKinleyville Union, and Loleta Union Elementary school districts -- along with school personnel, community, families, and school-aged youth.
The goals of this grant are to: 1. Increase awareness of mental health, substance use, and co-occurring disorders among school-aged youth, 2. Increase the mental health literacy of individuals who interact with school-aged youth to understand and detect the signs and symptoms of mental illness, substance use/misuse, and co-occurring disorders, 3. Promote and foster resilience building and mental health well-being for all school-aged youth, 4. Provide positive behavioral health supports; targeted services to those who need more support; and intensive services to those who need them, 5. Connect school-aged youth who may have behavioral health issues, including serious emotional disturbance or serious mental illness, and their families to needed services, and 6. Increase and improve access to culturally relevant, developmentally appropriate, and trauma-informed school and community-based AWARE activities and services.
Two Feathers will use a public health tiered service model that includes the following strategies and components: Needs Assessment, Workforce Development and Training Planning, Sustainability Planning, Public Health Tier 1-3 Intervention. Intervention will include Project Venture, Mental Health First Aid, Question-Persuade-Refer, Youth Ambassadors and Work Pods, Screening and Brief Intervention, Referral, Treatment, PHQ9, CRAFFT, crisis intervention, safety planning, care coordination, and direct provision of behavioral treatment services.
The impact of this program will be measured by the 1. number of individuals who have received training in prevention or mental health promotion, 2. number of organizations that entered into formal written MOUs and MOAs to improve mental-health related practices, 3. number of individuals screened for mental health or related interventions, services, or referral, 4. improvements in mental health-related knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, 5. trainings conducted and delivery method, 6. number of students training by demographics, and 7. number of help-seeking reports made by students after implementation of the policy.