The Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health announces its 19th Annual Conference. Family-Driven, Youth-Guided Partnerships with Mental Health, Juvenile & Criminal Justice: Defining Excellence & Increasing Success through Practice-Based Evidence will be held December 7-9, 2007 in Washington D.C.

The Conference Committee is currently inviting the submission of workshop or poster session proposals for the upcoming Conference.

Proposals of particular interest include those which:

• Acknowledge and incorporate cultural and linguistic diversity and the perspectives of youth and families in developing partnerships between mental health, juvenile and criminal justice and families.
• Highlight the collaboration between families, youth, advocates, and the research community that is necessary to better define Practice-based Evidence of successful programming efforts.
• Involve families in designing education, support and treatment programs that focus on youth with emotional challenges who are involved in the juvenile or criminal justice system.
• Provide practical examples of how the concept of “Family-Driven” is changing service delivery.
• Include examples of successful advocacy efforts at the local, state and national levels.
• Provide examples of youth-guided program treatment and support strategies that are known to work with youth who have emotional challenges and are involved in the juvenile or criminal justice system, but may not be readily embraced (or funded) by human service delivery systems and other traditional funding streams.
• Have an innovative research component included.

The application is available at http://www.ffcmh.org/07confcallforpapers.pdf and must be completed prior to June 30, 2007.

Please contact Scott Bryant-Comstock, Conference Coordinator, at (919) 219-2342 or by email at scott@bcinnovations.com with questions or comments.

To learn more about the Conference or the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health please visit their website at http://www.ffcmh.org.