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2016 CMHACY Workshops
The Application of the Stages of Change Model for Commercially Sexually Exploited Children & Trans Age Youth
Nicole Klasey, Independent Consultant, Maryvale
Gina Peck-Sobolewski, Senior Director of Residential Treatment, Maryvale,
The commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) of children and Transitional Age Youth is a fast growing epidemic, particularly in the foster care and juvenile justice system. Providers play a vital role in CSE prevention and intervention but there is little research on CSE-informed treatment and no evidenced based practices for working with this population. The Stages of Change model has been identified as a best practice for working with CSE youth and adults; however, many providers have struggled to understand the model and apply it. Therefore, the presenters will provide an overview of the model as it applies to working with CSE youth, specifically looking at it organizationally and individually with youth. It is important to note that this workshop is designed for participants who already have a basic knowledge of CSE.
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Katie A. in Statewide Practice: Toward Implementation of Shared Governance and Integrated Care for
California’s Foster Children and Youth.
Rochelle Trochtenberg, Lead Youth Organizer, Humboldt County Transition Age Youth Collaboration
Julie DeFranco, Social Service Supervisor II QA IHSS/CWS, Staff Development San Luis Obispo County
Department of Social Services
Richard S. Knecht, Transformation Manager, California Departments of Social and Health Care Services
In recent years, county Child Welfare and Mental Health partners have expanded their capacity to screen, assess and deliver intensive and timely mental health services. The state divisions responsible for supporting counties have been focused on parallel development of shared processes. Central to the Katie A. settlement agreement, the state has formed a
Shared Management Structure and model of collaborative governance, and begun to establish processes and function which will allow it to better listen to and respond to youth, parents and resource families. The emerging public-private structure and process will result in enhanced capacity to deliver shared Training and Technical Assistance, shared
Oversight and Accountability, shared Information and Data, and most critically, support a shared Core Practice Model for counties, and the youth and families served thereby.
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“Making our Communities Strong: MDFT in Three California Counties”
Cindy L. Rowe, Associate Director, MDFT International, Inc.
Kelly Collyer, Director of Family Therapy and MDFT Trainer, Lincoln, Contra Costa County
Adriana Bugarin, Associate Clinical Director, D’Veal Family and Youth Services, Pasadena, CA; MDFT
Supervisor and Trainer
Since 1985, research has validated a comprehensive, multiple-systems family-based treatment for adolescents with substance abuse and related problem behaviors called Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT). Adolescent conduct disorder, drug abuse, school problems, family dysfunction and emotional disturbance, are linked to risk factors in different domains of the child’s and family’s life, thus effective treatment requires a multidimensional, community-based intervention. MDFT has effectively reduced drug abuse and related problem behaviors and is recognized as among the most effective treatment approaches for this population. This presentation summarizes how MDFT works and describes its successful implementation Riverside, LA , and Contra Costa Counties.
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Supporting and empowering youth with the 40 Developmental Assets
Jessica Van Tuinen, Clinical Services Technician and Peer employee, Stanislaus County Behavioral Health and
Recovery Services at Juvenile Justice.

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Jorge Contreras, Clinical Services Technician and peer employee,t Stanislaus County Behavioral Health and
Recovery Services in the Juvenile Justice program
This workshop, driven by the curriculum “Raising Thriving Kids”, will describe how to work with youth to not only survive but to survive and thrive in life, and the way adults can support youth in achieving their goals. We will examine the importance of positive relationships, how to help young people develop confidence and have strong and healthy values, and what youth need to rise above adversity and thrive. Participants will become familiar with the 40 developmental assets, understand how increasing a youth’s number of assets will act as a protective factor against high risk behaviors, and will learn engagement ideas for youth participating in a peer mentoring program, and practical ways to assist youth in building assets with practical tools to support parents/caregivers in asset development.
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Fostering Hope: Using science to increase positive outcomes for foster youth
Beau Godtel, TBS/IHBS Assistant Program Manager, Casa Pacifica Centers for Children and Families
Theresa Plante, TBS/IHBS Assistant Program M anager, Casa Pacifica Centers for Children and Families
Utilizing current data, learn about the challenges and service model gaps facing our California foster youth on a daily basis. With techniques gleaned from the science of Applied Behavior Analysis, along with the research and reimbursement model, gain a practical, hands-on approach to positively supporting the development of foster youth in the community. Learn about basic factors that drive negative behavior patterns, three basic categorizations of behavioral function, as well as effective interventions to promote positive behavior change for youth, professionals, and caregivers.
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Strong Kids Group: Helping Children Who Have an Incarcerated Family Member
Vanessa Hurtado, Clinical Therapist,
Christina Saiz, LMFT, Clinical Therapist
Deysi Chavez-Belloso, Parent Participant
All from the Riverside University Health System-Behavioral Health: Preschool 0-5 Programs
One child out of every 28 has a parent in state or federal prison. Parental incarceration can be more detrimental to a child’s wellbeing than divorce or the death of a parent. They often feel shame and secrecy and have a negative world view and negative reactions towards law enforcement and societal expectations. The “Strong Kids” group was developed to implement practical strategies and practical tools to help these children by exploring their feelings of possible anger, embarrassment and/or shame, decreasing possible fear of seeking help from police officers, decreasing the sense of secrecy about their family situation, and providing a positive self-image. Our “Strong Kids” group has been disseminated to three school sites in Riverside County. Participants will learn how to develop a 10 session “Strong Kids” program of your own.
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“Whatever It Takes” to Securing Permanent Housing for Transitional Age Youth
Mary Bianchi, Supervisor of Non -Minor Dependent Unit, Department of Family & Children’s
Services, County of Santa Clara
Soo Jung, Permanent Supportive Housing Program Manager, Office of Supportive Housing,

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County of Santa Clara
“Meg” Mary Goetting, Community Solutions, FSPTAY Peer Partner, Housing Specialist
Carmen Lindsay, Community Solutions, FSP TAY Case Manager
Kendra McKibbin, ATR, IFECMH Specialist, RPF II, Community Solutions, CYBH Director
Jill Panattoni, Community Solutions, FSP TAY Clinical Program Manager
Utilizing the “Whatever It Takes” approach of a client-centered Full Service Partnership (FSP) Program, the FSP
TAY Housing Pilot Program is focused on permanent supportive housing options for Transitional Age Youth (TAY) faced with behavioral health challenges and who are identified as being at risk for homelessness or meet criteria for chronic homelessness defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The purpose of the program is to support homeless TAY clients who desire to live independently to secure permanent housing through the Care Coordination Project in Santa Clara County. The FSP TAY Housing Pilot Program is a collaborative effort between the Santa Clara County Department of Family and Children Services, Santa Clara County Office of
Supportive Housing, Santa Clara County Behavioral Health Department, and Community Solutions FSP TAY program.
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What’s Up with Training Parenting Skills with Culturally Distinct Children and Families?
Karyn Dresser, Star Behavioral Health Group Director of Research and Program Practices
Wandalyn Lane, Valley Star Behavioral Health Care’s Program Manager for Promoting Resilience in African
American Children (PRAAC)
Olga Moreno, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy Supervisor, Star View Community Services
Taji Huang, Star View Community Services’ Assistant Administrator
Alex Silva, Supervising Psychologist, Program Bureau, Los Angeles County’s MHSA Implementation Outcomes
Division
This workshop will present the rationale for offering parenting skills training based on proven curriculum and the challenges of implementing and sustaining such programming as a culturally attuned group or individual service. Each presenter will address similar prompts about their curriculum and process for attunement. Taken together, information about three distinct parenting skills practices will be covered, with a focus on the creative ways the respective program teams adapt these to meet the needs of a particular cultural group. Common or convergent themes across practices and populations will then be summarized, along with elements that seem to be distinctly important to specific populations.
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The Mental Health Bill of Rights for Foster Youth: A Case Study in Effective Collaboration Between
Administrators, Youth, & Advocates
Anna Johnson, Policy Advocate, National Center for Youth Law
Wesley Sheffield, Associate Attorney, Young Minds Advocacy
Annabelle Gardner, Director of Communications, Young Minds Advocacy
Tisha Ortiz, Youth Advocate
Effective partnerships between administrators and community stakeholders are integral to building a mental health system that meets the needs of youth and families. Over the last year the California Department of Social Services, California
Youth Connection, the National Center for Youth Law, Young Minds Advocacy, and other stakeholders have collaborated to develop the Mental Health Bill of Rights for Foster Youth in order to 1) create an educational tool for foster youth and their allies around the issue of mental health, 2) empower youth to be active participants in their own mental health treatment, and 3) develop relationships between state administrators, youth, advocacy organizations, clinicians, and other stakeholders. The Bill of Rights could provide a useful case study of the benefits and challenges of collaborative projects.

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Attendees will receive a copy of the Foster Youth Mental Health Bill of Rights brochure and learn strategies for building effective collaborations and developing youth-friendly deliverables.
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Raising Awareness and Empowering Parents of Children with Developmental Delays and Mental Health Concerns
Carmen Baldizon, Parent Advocate, Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health
Lisa Schoyer, LA County’s Countywide Regional Center Liaison for children ages 0 through school-age.
A parent’s perspective on meeting the needs of children with both mental health concerns and developmental disabilities.
We will look at a child’s functioning in domains such as the family, educational, developmental, and social, and provide information to help parents differentiate between behaviors that come from mental health issues and those that come from developmental delays. Current service systems are specialized to address specific areas of concern. Parents seek help for their child without enough information on which service system would best provide the help their child needs. We will help parents understand the various service systems and how to navigate them and access the services that would best suit the needs of their child.
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Children’s Mobile Crisis Teams: A closer look at community-based services for children and adolescents in crisis and their families
Sarah Adams, Program Manager, Children’s Mobile Crisis Team, Casa Pacifica Centers for Children and
Families
Norine Vander Hooven, Clinical Supervisor, Children’s Mobile Crisis Team, Casa Pacifica Centers for Children and Families
Appropriate psychiatric services for children in crisis are woefully inadequate. The number of children with mental health problems in crises has increased but the capacity of inpatient and outpatient community-based services has declined.
Children are being seen in the Emergency Rooms for a behavioral health crisis, a situation that can increase fear and stress of both the child and their caregivers. This need for increased crisis services for children has led several community-based agencies and partners to work closely to meet the needs of children while maintaining placement in the community.
Highlighting crisis services in two California counties where mobile crisis teams devoted exclusively to children/youth work closely with community providers, schools, law enforcement and Emergency Rooms, this session will present an effective service delivery model and provide practical collaborative strategies for assessing risk and implementing interventions that stabilize and reduce further risk of crises such as suicidal behaviors, aggression and/or psychotic symptoms. This session will identify and discuss the ongoing needs and recent developments in California to address unmet needs of children in the continuum of crisis care.
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Creative Disruption in Children’s & Youth Mental Health: the MHSA Innovations Funding Stream
Brian Sala, Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission (MHSOAC)
Nev Jones, Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission & Peer Advocate
Sheridan Merrit, Mental Health Services Oversight & Accountability Commission
Karyn Dresser, Stars Behavioral Health
Our workshop will kick-off with an overview from MHSOAC staff on the background and goals of the MHSA Innovation
(INN) funding stream and the role of community stakeholders in shaping, implementing and evaluating INN projects. We will then give a concrete description of two exemplary innovative youth mental health projects that staff from the Stars
Behavioral Health Group were able to develop, pilot and disseminate using INN funds. The presenters will then break the audience out into small (multi-stakeholder) workgroups, each tasked with generating creative ideas for innovative solutions to specific challenges in children’s mental health. The session will conclude with a group discussion and ‘bigger picture’ perspective on how to advance the ‘creative disruption’ of children’s and youth mental health across the state.

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The Child and Family Team Facilitation Process: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly -
Ontson Placide, Administrator/Trainer, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Tina Binda, Assistant Administrator/Trainer, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Denise Cooney, Director/Trainer, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Carlos Cos, Facilitator, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Latonya Bridgette, Child and Family Specialist (previous client) , Stars Behavioral Health Group
Paulette Edwards, Therapist, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Ramona Drake, Parent Partner Manager, Stars Behavioral Health Group
Running an effective Child and Family Team (CFT) Meeting requires a precarious mix of counseling, group dynamics, and negotiation/facilitation skills. Many states and counties across the nation have moved successfully toward a client/family centered approach to planning needs and delivery of services through CFTs. Many best practice principles have been identified and are being utilized in working with families, eg family voice and choice, addressing unmet needs, etc. This training was created as many staff ask “how to” rather than “what to” facilitate. This presentation will illustrate the facilitation skills needed for CFT Meetings. Three phases of participatory decision making and facilitation will be introduced and defined. Then the team will engage in live facilitation of a mock CFT meeting with stop action demonstration of effective skills, techniques, and guidance.
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Incorporation of CANS within large scale program monitoring and evaluations across a Children’s System of
Care; Trying to balance the importance of one child with the demand for aggregate information.
Timothy E. Hougen, Children’s Program Manager, Co of San Bernardino Dept of Behavioral Health
Mindy Lanum, Director of Program Evaluation and Outcomes, Victor Community Support Services, Inc & Victor
Treatment Centers, Inc.
This session will provide an annual program review structure utilized for Children’s System of Care programs that incorporates the CANS to aide in program evaluation. The structure allows for the consolidation of programs, a more focused review of a particular program, and a way to emphasize individual children’s needs while providing aggregate information. The presentation will include information on the creation of feedback loops regarding CANS data to aid in both the clinical processes and program management, including the integration of individual CANS within supervision and aggregate CANS data within program meetings. Additionally, ways to identify inaccurate scorings of TCOM tools will be reviewed and examples of how these were addressed will be provided. Each element will include an exploration from the County Mental Health perspective and from the perspective of a Community Based Organization.
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San Bernardino, A Community In Crisis. A Behavioral Health Response to Terrorism
Andrew Gruchy, Deputy Director Regional Programs, County of San Bernardino Department of Behavioral
Health
Michael Schertell, Deputy Director Children’s and Program Support Services, County of San Bernardino
Department of Behavioral Health
The tragic events of December 2 nd in the city of San Bernardino required an extensive response from the local County
Behavioral Health Department. This presentation will explore that response, what was effective and what was informative, while working in the midst of our own community’s struggle with the chaos and confusion caused by the actions of two terrorists. The intent of this presentation will be to assist others in considering their approach in any future chaos that may occur in their communities. Both presenters played pivotal roles in the development and implementation

6 of their Department’s response and will be able to provide a comprehensive overview of the behavioral health related actions taken countywide.
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Trauma Track
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Trauma Informed Systems Core Principle: Collaboration and Empowerment in Action: Connecting Across
Counties and Across the Youth and Family Movements
Anh Ta, Trauma Transformed
Susan Manzi, Youth in Mind
Family and youth advocates
Join us for an interactive workshop to learn more about a unique approach to developing a regional trauma-informed system of care in the Bay Area. Seven counties, working together to address trauma as a public health crisis, ignited an organization, Trauma Transformed, to support systems-transformation—with the heart of the work holding youth and families with lived-systems-experience to be part of every aspect, start to finish. Come listen to key youth and family leaders that sit on critical teams to hear about the innovative work and how a regional approach can be done across child welfare, behavioral health, juvenile justice, education, and more. This workshop is open for everyone interested in building networks across regions and systems to address trauma from the perspectives of those most impacted.
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Trauma Informed Systems Core Principle: Collaboration & Empowerment in Action: The Role of Leadership
Jen Leland, LMFT, Trauma Transformed
Paul Sorbo, San Mateo County,
Ken Epstein, San Francisco County,
Jeff Rackmil, Alameda County,
Sherri Terao, Santa Clara County
Trauma Transformed was born as a result of leadership coming together for common solutions to common challenges and putting the principle of collaboration and empowerment into action. This growing movement toward trauma-informed systems of care holds much promise and opportunity. It is inspiring CSOC leaders to begin embedding the core principles of trauma-informed care into leadership practices. The children, youth, and family systems of care leaders across multiple counties will present as a panel and conclude with a fishbowl discussion of:
-What does it mean to be a Trauma-Informed System of Care?
-Leadership under the Lens: Directors will present their own experiences of implementing trauma-informed practices into county systems of care and speak collectively about the challenges and opportunities of this unique regional approach toward aligning county-level practices into a regional model
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Introduction of Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) into a Public Behavioral Health System
Toni Demarco, Mental Health Supervising Clinician, San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery
Services (BHRS)

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Two years ago, San Mateo County BHRS pioneered an innovative clinical project to improve treatment applications and outcomes for traumatized youth and families. The Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) is a developmentallyinformed, biologically-respectful approach to working with at risk children. San Mateo County BHRS designed a training program for our county and community providers’ clinical staff. Our goal was to translate the latest neuroscience into relevant and impactful clinical care. The clinicians would learn how to identify needed interventions, provide an array of somatosensory services, and utilize the developmentally-informed framework to enhance the child’s environment to support better outcomes.
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