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In 2021, CMHACY celebrates its 41st year as the longest standing and most recognized and authoritative conference for children’s mental health in the state of California. Building upon our successful 2020 virtual conference, Changing Tides: Voices for Equity, Inclusion and Access, we are heeding the call to action of our keynote speaker James Bell. This year’s CMHACY Conference will create a forum for participants to discuss and decide which parts of our child-and-family serving systems we keep, which ones we change, and which ones we work to eliminate.

This year, to support the demands of communities for social justice and racial equity, CMHACY is requiring that presenters discuss and acknowledge the impacts of their policies, programs and services on the communities they serve.

Here are some examples of what we are looking for:

• Presentations that demonstrate clinical/programmatic effectiveness in addressing and improving the lives of those suffering from impacts of institutional racism;

• Presentations that identify ways to tweak State/County programs to achieve better outcomes for BIPOC communities until major change initiatives are instituted;

• Presentations that focus on building a unified collective impact by ALL child-serving systems, not just one or two;

• Presentations that exemplify the breaking down of siloed programs and financing across child-and-family serving systems;

• Presentations that facilitate individual self-interrogation and personal change regarding anti-racist attitudes, beliefs and behavior;

• Presentations that reframe programs and services from institutional “othering” to comprehensive, integrated “belonging”;

• Presentations that provide toolkits and approaches for establishing local advisory/advocacy boards to identify actionable steps to identify “what do we eliminate?” “what do we change?” “what do we keep?”

CMHACY believes that positive outcomes for children, youth and their families are best achieved with the inclusion of all key stakeholders. We therefore seek a range of presentations that include parents, caregivers, youth, general & special education, child welfare, juvenile justice, substance use/misuse, and the community of public/private mental health providers. Preference will be given to applications that include youth or family member(s) as either presenter(s) or respondent(s).

SELECTION CRITERIA

PROPOSAL WRITING TIPS