HI Discretionary Funding Fiscal Year 2018

Hawaii Families as Allies, the Hawaii state chapter of the National Federation of Families, will conduct training, provide technical assistance and support, and disseminate information aimed at increasing the involvement of families whose children have mental health challenges in all levels of Hawaii's System of Care. Hawaii Families as Allies will serve the entire state of Hawaii, with the goal of impacting about 200 families over the 3-year grant period. Only with strong, meaningful involvement of the families of youth with mental health challenges can Systems of Care develop high quality services and supports that meet the unique needs of families and result in positive outcomes.

HI-AWARE will support three school areas to reorient their three-tiered frameworks towards use of response to intervention for social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. HI-AWARE will focus on expanding evidence-based intervention options and strengthening school-family-community partnerships to make it everyone's shared responsibility to identify youth with SEB challenges and refer them to early intervention. All students in the three school areas will be served each year.

Crisis Counseling

Crisis Counseling

While juvenile justice efforts have led to a decreased census at the state's youth correctional facility, there has been an unintended outcome: an increased number of youth sent to out-of-state residential treatment programs. The unforeseen outcome has inspired efforts to better understand the issue and take action to reverse this trend. An expanded system of care including a wraparound program aimed specifically at returning out of-state youth back to their home communities and preventing placement of youth under consideration for out-of-state treatment is urgently needed. Hawaii is well positioned to succeed in this endeavor for a number of reasons. First, this project aims to strengthen and leverage programs already well established in Hawaii. For example Hawaii's Child Welfare Services has a small wraparound program upon which the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division (CAMHD) will build increasing capacity, expanding the targeted population and deploying the service statewide. Moreover, CAMHD employs parent and family partners with lived experience caring for youth in the child-serving system. This capacity will be increased with a wraparound specific skill set in mind. The second major reason for the state's readiness for wraparound is CAMHD's long standing use of evidence-based services including the modularized treatment model using practice elements (Daleiden, 2004). This project's goals are consistent with other recent wraparound efforts involving integrating these very practice elements into the wraparound plan, effectively wedding the strengths of the wraparound planning process with the clinical effectiveness of evidence-based treatment methods (Bruns et. al., 2012).

United Self-Help (USH) proposes to expand its current capacity to serve, support, and advocate on behalf of adults 18 years of age and older across the State of Hawaii with serious mental illness (SMI) or co-occurring SMI and substance use disorders (COD). The Consumer Empowerment Project aims to (1) empower mental health consumers/survivors to successfully advocate for themselves and others, (2) enhance peer specialists' knowledge and abilities to promote effective and quality peer support practices, (3) strengthen the organization's business practices to sustain our infrastructure and legacy, and (4) establish new support groups that are gender-responsive, trauma-informed, and culturally and linguistically relevant. Consumers will gain self-empowerment skills through the establishment and implementation of a leadership and recovery training, through the expansion of peer support groups across the state, through the development of linguistically and culturally relevant outreach and mutual support efforts, and through online support and training for peer support specialists and others professionals in the workforce. USH also proposes to become the first accredited and credentialed consumer-run and -controlled organization in the State of Hawaii, leveraging grant funds, while also building the organization's internal infrastructure to ensure sustainability via organization assessments and performance improvement activities.

The University of Hawai?i Suicide Prevention Program will serve a highly diverse student population and will target sub-populations that are at high risk for depression, suicide, and substance use issues, including Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, LGBTQ students, students with disabilities, veterans, and students who stigmatize mental health and / or rarely access mental health care prevention and support services. The goals of this grant project are to reduce mental health disparities related to our students’ race, ethnicity, gender and/or sexual identity; decrease reported levels of student distress and suicidal ideation on campus; and educate students and campus community about alcohol and substance use and abuse as a means of reducing high-risk and harmful student behaviors. Interventions and strategies used will include suicide prevention gatekeeper trainings, mental health and substance use focus groups, mental health screening, alternative mental health wellness intervention / prevention programming, and stigma reduction education. The project’s objectives are as follows: (1) to develop a Community Stakeholder Communication Protocol and establish a Community Prevention Network, (2) facilitate completion of Kognito for 40% of targeted student leaders / employees, and 30% of targeted faculty / staff by end of grant period, (3) train two new QPR facilitators to offer this suicide prevention gatekeeper training to 210 students over three years, (4) establish sustainable protocols and management systems for ongoing suicide prevention gatekeeper training, (5) train 40 student leaders over three years in using and sharing Hei, an indigenous strategy for well-being, (6) increase student participation in mental health / substance use screening events by 10% each year, (7) roll out No Shame, No Blame stigma reduction campaign particularly targeting Hawaiian and Pacific Islander men, (8) by the end of three years, produce six video clips aimed at increasing targeted students’ access of counseling services by 15%, (9) deliver evidence-based substance use intervention program(s) to 30% of students who have identified themselves as needing this support, (10) develop culturally relevant alternative mental health prevention and intervention strategies by conducting focus groups, allowing at least 120 students over three years to access mental health care services who otherwise would not, (11) expand access to HeartMath software by at least 25 students a year as part of a campaign about stress, anxiety and sleep management, and (12) revitalize Men of Strength programming as a means of increasing participant’s help-seeking, well-being, and knowledge of campus and community support resources.

The coalition will prevent and reduce youth substance use by implementing the following strategies: Provide information through social media, enhance skills through training, and provide support by organizing an annual community-wide event for youth, families and community members to strengthen community; organize a business initiative to increase awareness about Hawaii's Social Host Law; work with youth to conduct a community alcohol availability scan and merchant education to reduce youth exposure to alcohol and advertisements; publically recognize businesses that support reducing and preventing youth access to alcohol and underage drinking; educate youth, community members, legislators, and other decision-makers about the negative impact of marijuana on youth and public health.

The Maui Coalition for Drug-Free Youth is focused on youth alcohol and marijuana prevention in Wailuku, HI 96793. The population to be served will be youth in the town of Wailuku. The National-Cross Site Evaluation will include the four core measures on tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, and prescription drug use for the 8th, 10th, and 12th grade youth in Wailuku. The 3 outcomes are as follows: 1) By 09/29/23, increase membership in the parent, media, business, and faith sectors by a combined total of 30% as determined by Coalition Involvement Agreements. 2) By 09/29/23, reduce 30-day use of alcohol by 3% among 8th, 10th, and 12th grades students as determined by a youth survey result. 3) By 09/29/23, reduce 30-day use of marijuana by 3% among 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students as determined by a youth survey result. Strategies for the three objectives will include creating a Coalition membership committee, increasing community outreach activities, passing a local social host ordinance, and addressing youth alcohol and marijuana use at local hotspots through party patrols and other deterrence measures.

The purpose of Hawaii’s Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success Project (HI-SPF-PFS) is to strengthen and enhance Hawaii’s prevention system to promote well-being and reduce the impact of underage drinking (UAD) among persons aged 9 to 20 in Hawaii’s communities. The project plans to align prevention priorities and the implementation of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) process to ensure effective prevention strategies and sustainable infrastructures. Mobilizing local communities to get involved in the components of the SPF: assessment, capacity, planning, implementation, evaluation, cultural competence and sustainability is key to impacting alcohol use across the state. The goals of the HI-SPF-PFS are based in the belief that the strength and success of a comprehensive prevention system exist at the community level. The HI-SPF-PFS will: (1) Increase the capacity of communities to effectively prevent and reduce underage drinking, substance misuse and related issues at the local level; (2) Use the SPF to select and implement evidence-based programs, policies, and practices to best address prevention priorities for high risk communities and populations, and; (3) Align the prevention system's efforts to sustain community mobilization, collaboration and the delivery of strategies to prevent and reduce UAD, substance use and related problems in local communities. HI-SPF-PFS will build upon the accomplishments of the SPF-SIG and 2013 SPF-PFS Grants and the current services provided by the Substance Abuse Block Grant (SABG) to achieve the project’s goals. The SPF-PFS Project staff in collaboration with the Lead Evaluator, the Lead Epidemiologist, and the State Epidemiological Outcome Workgroup (SEOW) Lead Analyst will provide leadership to accomplish project goals and key activities during the award period. The HI-SPF-PFS will build and strengthen collaboration among state agencies, stakeholders, and communities statewide concerning substance misuse and its associated consequences. By the end of the five-year grant period, a comprehensive, organized, effective, and data-driven prevention system should be in place.