MACMH Family Catalyst Mission:

The Mission for the MACMH Family Catalyst Project is to provide structure, training, mentoring, and support to form a corps of parent leaders able to enhance system capacity to better meet the needs of children with mental health disorders. The intensity and life-long duration of parents’ involvement with children’s needs makes them the natural catalysts to initiate, plan, organize and follow through on needed changes in the state’s system of care.

Project Goals:

• To strengthen the capacity of families who have children with mental health disorders to act as agents of transformation in influencing the type, quality and amount of services provided to ensure mental health care is child centered and family driven.

• To strengthen collaboration between families and community based mental health organizations, policy-makers, and service providers

• To foster leadership skills through specific training and mentored work-group project experiences

• Identify and address technical needs and gaps that remain unmet for parents and their children with mental health disorders

• Partner with culturally diverse constituencies to recruit parent catalysts from many different cultural backgrounds

Find out more about becoming a family catalyst • The Family Catalyst Fact Sheet

Contact Us:

Deborah Cavitt, Project Director
Minnesota Association for Children’s Mental Health
165 Western Avenue North, Suite 2
Saint Paul, MN 55102
651-644-7333
dcavitt@macmh.org