YouthMOVE Athens helped in the planning of this YouthMOVE Ohio statewide virtual initiative. During the 3 week long action there were over 20,000 responses. Although it is officially over, the daily challenges can still be followed for those just discovering it. You can try to complete the actions from all 14 days or pick and choose what you like from each one.

YouthMOVE Athens councilmember and OU freshman, Jade, helped table at the conference on Oct. 7th in Baker Center Ballroom at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

Below is an email that was sent out to the NAMI Board of Directors and eventually forwarded to YouthMOVE Athens.  Athens County Resident and YouthMOVE Ohio councilmember, Jade, was an influential youth voice when she testified to an Ohio Senate Finance Committee in May at the Ohio State House (see archive May 2019).

A Great Day for Those We Represent

Last night the Conference Committee voted to present the 2020/2021 state budget today to the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House was to vote today at 1:00 PM and the Senate at 3:00 PM to ratify this budget. We were just told that the House and the Senate approved the Conference Committee’s recommendations.
 
As you are all aware, I am never speechless but the approved state budget certainly reflected NAMI Ohio’s advocacy work over the past number of years. Our members, affiliates, friends, the Board of Directors, and me and my staff may have accomplished more than we could have ever dreamed.
 
As you remember over 3 years ago, NAMI Ohio began to discuss crisis services which led us to the development of the Adam-Amanda Mental Health Rehabilitation Center. This year, we advocated for new crisis funding to do everything we could to eliminate the use of emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and the criminal justice system as the first entry into the mental health system. The approved state budget added $37 million in crisis and $36 million for prevention.
 
The Governor recommended $36 million for prevention. He also recommended $550 million for the Student Wellness and Success funding which includes a significant focus on children’s mental health. The House of Representatives approved the Governor’s recommendations and added $125 million for a total of $675 million for this purpose. In May, the Senate removed the $36 million for prevention activities as well as the House of Representative’s increase of $125 million for the Student Wellness and Success funding. Because of our advocacy with the 6 members of the Conference Committee including the Governor, Speaker Householder and Senator Burke, both of those items removed by the Senate were re-instated in the final budget.
 
More specifically in each of these areas, in the area of Prevention the General Assembly approved $18M in FY 2020 to support K-12 prevention education initiatives, and to purchase prevention curricula and provide quality prevention services; and another $13M in FY 2020 and up to $5M in FY 2021 to support and expand statewide multi-media prevention, treatment, and stigma reduction campaigns. In the area of Crisis Continuum of Care the General Assembly approved $37M total over the biennium to expand Crisis Response and downstream stabilization services for mental illness. This $37 million includes $15M over biennium ($7.5M/year) continued from last biennium for SUD Withdraw Management Centers and Collaborative (SUD/MH) Crisis Centers; also $10 M over biennium ($6M/year) for Infrastructure of Crisis Services, and another $12 M over the biennium for Crisis Stabilization and Prevention.
 
The Student Wellness and Success Funds for children’s mental health ($675 million) will be used for mental health counseling, wraparound supports, mentoring, after school programs, and more.
 
Tomorrow, I will be sending a letter concerning how this budget impacts the Medicaid Re-design and how we have hope that these changes will eliminate much of the chaos that has occurred during this implementation.
 
There are also other items in the state budget – one sponsored by Gail Channing-Tenenbaum, the foremost children’s advocate in the state, that increases funding by $18 million of flexible dollars in the Medicaid portion of the state budget to end custody relinquishment for multi-system youth. The budget also added $5 million to create at least 30 more Specialized Courts (including mental health courts) during the biennium. There is also another $5 million to expand the number of individuals trained in mental health first aid and CIT.
 
Congratulations!  All of your advocacy during the budget was incredibly successful.  For those baseball fans out there, we literally batted 1000!  The bottom line is, every single one of NAMI Ohio’s budget priorities, including maintaining the psychiatric physician and advance practice nursing exemption from prior authorizations for psychiatric medications as well as the funding priorities, were included in the final state budget bill. 
 
All of us know the meanness of mental illness. We know from our lived experiences that there is no magic wand to take the pain away. But today everyone involved with NAMI Ohio can step back and pray that we are moving toward the day where our loved ones will be able to get the services needed to recover. We are a long way away from having a system that meets our needs. Our challenge now is to address issues such as housing, more mental health rehabilitation centers, expansion of Clubhouses, employment and make sure that the money that has just been budgeted is expended appropriately.
 
There are many days when all of us question if what we are doing makes a difference. Today is not one of those days. Today is a day of celebration. I ask each of you to recognize that the comment, “You’ll never walk alone” will be true if NAMI’s voice is heard.
 
God bless,
Terry
 
Terry Russell
Executive Director
National Alliance on Mental Illness of Ohio
1225 Dublin Road, Suite 125
Columbus, Ohio 43215
614-224-2700
terry@namiohio.org

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Main notes from the Ohio Council retreat:

1. Updates were provided on the Ohio Interagency Council for Youth and ENGAGE 2.0 project.

2. The YouthMOVE Ohio upcoming year priorities, calendar, & budget were discussed.

3. A new restructuring for YouthMOVE Ohio for 2019-20 was discussed. Adult staff & agency turnovers cause problems with maintaining county YouthMOVEs. Regional groups will be created. Athens County regional group will include Vinton and Meigs Counties. Each county will have 2 representatives on the regional councils. There will be an established regional point person that needs to be a youth/young adult. Then the regional councils will have at least 1 representative on the state council. There are about 30 counties in Ohio involved at least somewhat with YouthMOVE. The YouthMOVE Ohio fiscal budget usually has funding for about 20 counties. The goal is to maintain 10 youth regional councils. Funding would flow to the regional committees to be distributed to the local. The goal is to provide at least $3,000 to each region with $800 budgeted for the work of the regional point person. Some local chapters are more active than others. YouthMOVE Ohio grant reports are due June 30th and Jan. 30th each year. State budget gets approved around July each year. YouthMOVE Ohio's budget can vary year to year. YouthMOVE Ohio has many sponsors that believe in them and provide funding for events/projects year to year.
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4. Terry Greene presented to the state youth council. He shared his powerful life story on breaking generational challenges & traumas, his experience with an unfair justice system for a young black youth and his ability to self-perservere. Because Terry's story could be triggering for many, time was taken for processing &  recovery. Terry now runs Think Make Live, LLC which is a social justice consulting firm that provides innovative strategies to support returning citizens and opportunity youth within the community and the workforce. More information can be found at www.ThinkMakeLive.org.

5. Peer Support: spoke about the process for getting training/certification for peer supporters. This has been a “movement” that has been in the works for about 10 yrs so far. The State of Ohio has not defined Peer Support well even though they have made a commitment to support it (including requiring it in their grants). There are 3 different ways: 2 involve older youth to younger youth support, the 3rd is family support. There is a 16 hr online and a 40 hr face to face training. Council feels that the current system of Peer Support training/certification is not “best practice” but since already approved by Medicaid, and getting approval is a cumbersome process, it not likely to change. Lots of agencies across the state are doing some form of peer support so it would be great to understand this better. YouthMOVE Ohio is hoping to move the issue along by having a Peer Support Summit in Oct or early Nov. 2019.  A goal is to have this summit replace the Systems of Care Summit this year and then begin by alternating every other year with a Systems of Care Summit. YouthMOVE Ohio is in the process of securing collaborations and sponsors for a Peer Support Summit.

Of Note: last year at the Systems of Care Summit there were simple application grants available to pay fully for youth/families to attend (i.e. hotel, mileage, food, conference fees). This will be a goal again at this summit. 

6. Grant review process: YM Ohio is periodically asked to review state grants and rank them. A grant criteria the state has (for behaviorial health related) is to include youth/family input. Many grant proposals fail at this altogether or indicate have done it but it was not as authentic an inclusion as should/could be. Writing a grant clearly is important; meeting grant criteria can be the difference between getting a project funded to having $0. After the review process, some municipalities did not make the cutoff for funding based on grant ranking and state money available; however, the larger grant review committee is working on solutions to resolving this issue as these municipalities are doing valuable projects even if their grant writing did not make this clear.

Of Note: having an Athens Youth Council could help with more authentic youth/family input for grants submitted from county agencies in the future. This could bring more money to Athens County for youth/young adult programs.

​7. May is mental health awareness month. For 2019 the Resiliency Ring Event occurred the week before the NAMI conference. The goal for May 2020 is to have them occur during the same time period and have conference attendees at the Resiliency Ring. The NAMI conference is usually the 2nd week of May. Local YouthMOVE chapters will still do an advocacy event during the first week of May. These events can vary, some examples include: a virtual event such as social media push or a  "letter writing" campaign to state legislatures, a booth at an event, etc.

8. Angela announced that the Ohio Senate approved 18 million and the Ohio House approved 26 million (will get hashed out in committee for final amount) within the biennial state budget for funding related to preventing custody relinguishment for multisystem youth (in order for youth/families to be able to access Medicaid for needed mental health & developmental diability services). Too frequently families have been faced with custody relinguishment as a last resort, often after already experiencing great financial, emotional and work stability detriment. Jade testified in mid-May to an Ohio Senate Committee regarding this issue and another youth testified to an Ohio House Committee. Jade and her mother also each provided written testimony to the full senate finance committee in late May. Youth and Family voice matters! 

​Related news article:
https://www.statenews.org/post/parents-ohio-lawmakers-help-prevent-child-custody-relinquishment
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Representatives from youth-serving agencies, the director of Athens Family and Children First Council, the Athens YouthMOVE adult coordinator, and 2 Athens County youth met at the The Plains Library. High priority remains for identifying and recruiting more youth to participate on the YouthMOVE Athens steering committee.

1. Participants discussed goals for demographics of Athens Youth Council. The following was determined:

• Ages 14-24 would be target age. Councilmembers would be encouraged to serve 2-4 year terms. Councilmembers would age out at 26. 
• The youth council will be capped at 15 members.
• A priority was set to recruit councilmembers with lived experience from various systems of care as well as various geographic locations within the county.
• Examples of lived experience within youth-serving systems include: foster care, juvenile justice, mental health, developmental disability, hospitilization due to mental health, substance use disorder (drugs & alcohol), lived in a group home, had an IEP or received special education services, homeless, LGBTQ+, or physical disability.
• A checklist would be added to the county application to indicate attendence at county high schools/colleges, homeschool or workforce.

2. Various ways to get the word out about YouthMOVE Athens was discussed. 

• suggestions included: creating dedicated email contact, cover letter/application emailed to community partners, flyers posted at local youth serving community locations, social media, booth/networking at Natural Freedom Youth Suicide Prevention Conference (Aug. 2nd), booth at OU resource fair (and possibly other school resource fairs).
• Tatum volunteered to work on creating a unique YouthMOVE Athens logo.
• Beth volunteered to look into printing YouthMOVE Athens materials. YouthMOVE Ohio uses VistaPrint printing services which can be done through online/mail.

3. Initial round of applications for YouthMOVE Athens councilmembers will be accepted through September 30, 2019.

4. A youth council training/planning retreat was targeted for the month of November. YouthMOVE Ohio will send a team to help with the retreat. Beth volunteered to inquire about dates/location/budget.

5. Family and Children First Council serve youth up to age 21. Therefore, youth 21 and under on council may be able to receive funding from FCFC for YouthMOVE activities. Consideration of funding received from the regional/state YouthMOVE for 22+ was encouraged.

6. Next steering committee meeting date/time/location TBT.

As strong advocates for Family and Children First Councils, Jade and her mother, Beth, were both being recruited to testify, and this time it was to the Full Senate Finance Committee regarding funding for multisystem youth within H.B. 166, Ohio's Operating Budget. Due to conflicts, neither were able to give in-person testimony but were able to submit written testimony. Jade's written testimony continued her advocacy for increased funding for mental health services for middle class families with private insurance, preventative school-based programs and local wraparound care. Beth's written testimony provided her parent perspective on the challenges and ultimate success of navigating youth-serving systems of care for her daughter.

During one of the busiest times of the school year, fellow Athens High School students, Jade and Tatum, were able to procure a teacher advisor and facilitate a YouthMOVE introductory meeting. Although there was limited attendence, those that attended showed a great deal of interest in participating in future YouthMOVE meetings and events. After graduation Jade will attend Ohio University while continuing to serve as a councilmember with YouthMOVE Ohio and YouthMOVE Athens. Tatum is a founding councilmember with YouthMOVE Athens and will be able to continue efforts to establish a YouthMOVE group at the high school during her upcoming senior year with support from the county chapter.