312-227-8124

Children’s Mental Health Plan

ICMHP plan image

Announcing the Illinois Children’s Mental Health Plan!

ICMHP was charged with developing and monitoring a plan to build comprehensive and coordinated mental health services, programs, and supports for Illinois children and their families. The Partnership created its initial plan in 2005, with a brief update to the strategic priorities in 2012. We are excited to announce that for the first time in 17 years, ICMHP and the State of Illinois have developed a new Children’s Mental Health Plan to improve the overall wellbeing of all Illinois youth and families.

ICMHP 2022 CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH PLAN

ICMHP 2022 CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH PLAN Executive Summary

The Illinois Children’s Mental Health Plan Release Webinar

During Children’s Mental Health Week and Mental Health Month this year, we  announced the release of our highly anticipated Children’s Mental Health Plan for Illinois where we shared our journey to develop the Plan and our goals for improving child and family mental health and wellness. The webinar  featured remarks by ICMHP Interim Chair Dr. Sameer Vohra, ICMHP Director Amanda M. Walsh, and Dr. Dana Weiner, the newly announced Director of the Governor’s Office Children’s Behavioral Health Transformation Initiative. The webinar provided an overview of the Plan’s 5 goals.

Over the past 17 months, ICMHP has worked with stakeholders from across the state to develop a systematic, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary plan that would address the needs of children, families, and communities. Our priority from the start has been to use a whole child and family approach that prioritizes equity, diversity, and inclusion. In order for the State of Illinois to be best prepared to serve the mental health and wellness of all children, families, and communities we developed five goals, which were shared each day during Children’s Mental Health Week through our newsletter and social media accounts.

Watch Release Webinar

Our Values

In order to improve the mental health and wellness for children, families, and communities across Illinois, it was important for the Plan to start with a set of values. These values were then echoed repeatedly throughout the development process, becoming overarching themes for the recommended goals and action steps. It is clear that these values must be at the center of every decision, program, and policy aimed at improving child and family mental health.

Equity

The fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement of all people, while also striving to identify and eliminate barriers that have excluded individuals;

Diversity

Diverse representation across race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and socio-economic status;

Inclusion

All voices must not only be represented but actively included in the process — in particular, the youth, families, and communities with lived experience;

Wellness

Mental health for all, including children and families, should not be viewed as separate from our overall health and well-being. We must all recognize it is part of our everyday actions and lives; and

Health in All Policies

An acknowledgement that mental health and wellness as a component of overall health is relevant in all statewide policy decisions, including economic development, housing, food insecurity, transportation, and more.

Children’s Mental Health Plan 5 Goals

Goal 1: Awareness, Acceptance, and Supports

Increase public awareness on all issues connected to child and family mental health and wellness to decrease stigma, promote acceptance, and strengthen children, families, and communities to identify needs and access supports with resources and funding.

Goal 2: Coordination, Needs Assessment, and Innovation

Create a coordinating entity responsible for 1) conducting a comprehensive and cross-system needs assessment of programs, services, and policies that touch children’s mental health, 2) monitoring and assessing spending on all child and family mental health and wellness services to determine scope and effectiveness, and 3) fostering innovation of adaptive and new practices to improve children’s health.

Goal 3: Centralized Hub

Develop, maintain, and ensure ongoing monitoring of a hub of programs, services, and policies easily accessible to the public to assist with navigation, resources, and funding.

Goal 4: Child-serving Workforce

Grow, retain, diversify, and support the child-serving workforce, with special emphasis on professional development around child and family mental health and wellness, and services and supports to address needs.

Goal 5: Systems of Care

Fund the design, implementation, and evaluation of system of care strategies that prevent and treat mental health concerns and mitigate trauma by more effectively delivering services.

Plan development process

In addition to our community input, the Plan was being developed through four working groups:

  • Social Determinants of Health
  • Prevention
  • Early Intervention
  • Treatment

These workgroups were charged with creating recommendations to address the unique needs that a child and their family will face at different points of time and across systems on a mental health and wellness continuum. The workgroup processes were led by our Steering Committee, whose role was to help align the recommendations across all four workgroups into one final Children’s Mental Health Plan. More information about our Steering Committee is below.

You can access information about the Plan and development process here. If you have questions, please email icmhp@luriechildrens.org.

Steering Committee

The Steering Committee was made up of workgroup co-chairs, system experts, the ICMHP Interim Chair, ICMHP Director, and ICMHP staff. The following button titled “Member Resources” allowed Steering Committee members to access background materials and general information that aided in the Plan development process. All Steering Committee meeting minutes and final materials developed by the Steering Committee are available below.

MEMBER RESOURCES

Meeting minutes:

Steering Committee Members

Andrea Durbin, AM

*ICMHP Appointee

Social Determinants of Health Workgroup Co-Chair
Chief Executive Officer
Illinois Collaboration on Youth (ICOY)

Niya Kelly, MA, JD

Social Determinants of Health Workgroup Co-Chair
Director of State Legislative Policy, Equity and Transformation
Chicago Coalition for the Homeless

Marlita White, MSW, LCSW

*ICMHP Appointee

Promotion and Prevention Workgroup Co-Chair
Director, Office of Violence Prevention and Behavioral Health
Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH)

Kathy Swafford, MD, FAAP

Promotion and Prevention Workgroup Co-Chair
Medical Director
Children’s Medical and Mental Health Resource Network

Jennie Pinkwater, MNM

*ICMHP Appointee

Early Intervention Workgroup Co-Chair
Executive Director
Illinois Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (ICAAP)

Kristine Argue-Mason, MPA

Early Intervention Workgroup Co-Chair
Executive Director
Partnership for Resilience

Regina Crider

*ICMHP Appointee

Treatment Workgroup Co-Chair
Founder and Executive Director
Youth and Family Peer Support Alliance

John T. Walkup, MD

Treatment Workgroup Co-Chair
Chair, Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health
Anne and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
Margaret C. Osterman Professor of Psychiatry
Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine

Julie Hamos

Systems Expert
Senior Policy Advisor at the Office of Medicaid Innovation  University of Illinois

Barbara Shaw

Systems Expert
Former Chair of ICMHP (2004-2014)

225 E. Chicago Ave.
Box 153
Chicago, Illinois 60611
| 312-227-8124

© 2023 Copyright, Illinois Children’s Mental Health Partnership. Contact