Recordings and Slides:
July 26th
Opening Keynote
Mobile Response Stabilization Service: A Necessary Component of a Comprehensive Children’s SOC by Richard Shepler
Mobile Response Stabilization Service (MRSS) is an essential component of a comprehensive system of care (SOC) for children, youth, young adults, and their families. MRSS is an urgent mobile stabilization service that is available 24/7/365 and provides crisis intervention, safety planning, and stabilization in the home and community. The goal of MRSS is to provide a safe alternative to more restrictive services, and to assist the youth and family in reducing the intensity and frequency of future crises. This presentation will present an overview of the MRSS model and its context and function within a comprehensive SOC.
Workshops
CFPs Across Texas: Infusing Connection and Support by Nidia Heston, Angie D. Jackson, & Danielle Mullins
This workshop will provide information on history and workforce of Certified Family Partners (CFP) in Texas. Panelists will also share the value of the lived experience CFPs can bring to an organization in engaging families in systems. The engagement leads to better family and youth outcomes and family voice and choice being infused in systems. Audience members will come away with an understanding of the meaning of family voice as well as the value of lived experience navigating child serving systems.
Community Engagement and Health Equity: The New Social Contract for Academic Medicine by Carolyn Morales & Brigham Willis
This presentation will provide participants with a comprehensive overview of how to utilize a Community Advisory Board (CAB) to foster connection and craft behavioral health strategies and solutions across local, regional, and state levels. Participants learn how the University of Texas at Tyler School of Medicine is utilizing their CAB as an opportunity to engage FQHC’s, rural health clinics, area nonprofits, and diverse community leaders in a collaborative partnership designed to understand and address health equity gaps.
Mental Health is a Team Effort: Empower Yourself, Empower Others by Janie Stubblefield
This interactive workshop will focus on empowering team members at every level to go beyond “See Something, Say Something” to become a part of the solution of real-world concerns. The for the general public, the phrase “mental health” conjures up images from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Silence of the Lamb’s which only adds to the stigma that millions of Americans live with every day. Persons with mental illness, and substance use disorders walk the halls of our schools and work place every day. Participants will learn key signs to identify when someone is struggling as well as relevant avenues for help before a crisis occurs.
The Texas Education Agency Mental Health Connections and Resources by Tammy Gendke
Tammy Gendke is a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology (LSSP) who has 19 years of experience in various roles in public education. She highlights resources that have been developed at the Texas Education Agency to address the mental health and wellness of our school-aged students and school staff. The Texas School Mental Health Resource Database was developed in response to Senate Bill 11 (86th Leg) to identify available resources for each region in Texas, along with state-wide resources. The session will highlight new policies adopted in the 88th Texas Legislature related to mental health in schools. Given that Fentanyl is one of the nation’s deadliest drugs, the session will share TEA’s curated resources, tools and materials developed that can be utilized by schools to bring awareness and prevention of fentanyl use and deaths, including resources to work with parents.
Family Voice in Action: How We Connect, Support, and Advocate for Nothing about Them Without Them by Monica Reyes, Ola Collins Jobe, & Bertha Rodriguez
The presentation will give provide the audience and opportunity to understand what it really means when we say nothing about them without them. What does having a Family or Youth voice mean in reality. The presentation will discuss how the presenters lived experience allows them to connect with the families that they serve, how they have navigated on their own behalf and in turn support and empower others to do the same. How they are active in their community enduring that Family and Youth voice is not just heard but put into action. How they utilize their personal stories, their professional experience and their belief in the values of system of care to empower families that they too are experts, that they too are advocates and that they do matter.
It’s Not All about Heart: Lessons for Developing a Resilient Brain by Molly Lopez & Natalie Fikac
This session will explore aspects of the Stress Management and Resiliency Training or SMART model, which is an innovative, modern, and uplifting approach to enhance individual resilience. SMART, developed by Dr. Amit Sood at Mayo Clinic, offers a way to practice self-preservation by engaging the brain’s focused mode—not only to experience more uplifting emotions, but also develop better focus, enhance creativity and productivity, improve engagement, deepen relationships, and find greater purpose in life. In this experiential session, participants will learn several key components of the SMART model and practice some of the skills.
Physician Heal Thyself: Creative Counselor Self-Care by Janie Stubblefield
This interactive workshop will be a deep-tissue massage for your emotional well-being. With staggering statistics as high as 78% self-reported burnout in psychiatrists where the pre-COVID average rate of mental health practitioner burnout was as low as 21 %. A strong connection exists between compassion fatigue and burnout among practitioners. In this workshop, you can take a moment to step away from your high-intensity work as the provider to nourish your own soul and refresh your clinical alertness to better serve yourself and your clients. Participants will engage in brief self-care activities to learn the fundamentals for the ongoing practice for a lifetime to avoid compassion fatigue and burnout.
Youth Panel Discussion by Kaylah Topasna & Arianna Mellinger
Our vision is to shed light on the Peer Support Specialists in all systems of care. With this panel presentation, we hope to provide role clarification for the Peer Specialist role, while highlighting the power of peer support in building authentic connection and authentic youth voice. During this panel discussion, participants will be able to view a short documentary highlighting the impact of youth peer support providers.
- Recording not available
- The Power of Connection: Youth Peer Support in Texas Video
CRCG: What’s This Meeting All About – Nuts and Bolts of It All by Sonia Hartman
This session will discuss the importance of collaboration in building and developing an effective CRCG. Discussing the ins and outs of managing and facilitating a CRCG, the importance of community commitments, processes and that it takes more than a Chair to maintain a CRCG. It will also discuss the similarities between System of Care Values and the reason/purpose CRCG’s were created, the importance for counties and communities and how we are making a difference for the children, families, adults that are served. It will also provide an opportunity to discuss the strengths and challenges of maintaining a CRCG, and how there is one mandate but different formats for how that mandate is implemented across the state. The presentation will provide an example of how Travis County has embedded the values of System of Care in their CRCG and how they have been able to maintain long standing partnerships with Juvenile Justice, School Districts, DFPS, and the Local Mental Health Authority.
Crossed Roads: A Family’s Journey with Autism and Mental Health Diagnosis by Nidia Heston & Adrian Heston V.
The intent of this presentation is to share with self-advocates, family members, and system providers, how, through a youth’s voice, a family can support their youth’s strengths and goals through a complicated and often misunderstood dual diagnosis like autism and mood disorder. Along with resources, this presentation will demonstrate how the youth and family continue to navigate systems, coordinate service providers to meet the goals and needs of the youth and family, and continually build their support systems.
Legislative Overview by Shannon Hoffman
A summary of the 2023 legislative session.