November: OST and Youth Mental Health

Mar 11

The November event provided space for the more than 30 participants, representing 20 organizations to mingle and share specifically what their programs are doing to support youth mental health (see below) as well as share questions and wonderings they have. We kicked everything off with Austin Collins, Mental Health Administrator, with the Office of Children Affairs, sharing his role with the city as well as a link to resources for the OST community. Finally, participants shared and explored the following questions with their tables, where they had robust conversations about:

How to support youth mental health when you are not a trained provider.
What are the barriers and gaps to providing support? What are some ideas and potential solutions to eliminate barriers?
Participants shared their ideal program states if barriers did not exist and what they can do together to start moving toward that ideal state.
How do you know mental health is a need for your youth and how do you measure impact?

The expectation was not to “solve” the challenges, but rather to share space, learn about each other, gather resources and make connections for the future.

Some people in attendance identified what their organizations are currently doing for youth mental health. To learn more, click on the links below:

Life-Line Colorado