SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Family-Led Crisis Planning for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness and Serious Emotional Disturbance (June 30th, 2025)
Since its launch in 2022, 988 has received over 10 million calls, texts, and chat messages—many from individuals in crisis experiencing serious mental illness or serious emotional disturbance (SMI/SED). Involving families in the continuum of care from crisis prevention to intervention to treatment and recovery improves outcomes for individuals, families, providers, and systems. SAMHSA’s 2025 National Crisis Guidelines include the principle, “Crisis services should be person-centered, family-focused, and provide the right level of care at the right time.”
In this webinar, we will learn from LIFT Community Action Agency Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist Susan Terry-Ball about the turning points that show a family that their loved one with SMI/SED may soon be in crisis—and what steps to take to prevent that crisis. We will also hear from Sheamekah Williams, President and CEO of the Evolution Foundation and immediate past Director of Children, Youth, and Family Services at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services about her work coordinating with 988 to increase individuals with SMI/SED’s ability to access treatment during a crisis. Statewide Wraparound Family Support Specialist trainer and Peer Coach with Oregon Family Support Network Melinda Brummett will explain how the creation of a family-led crisis plan can support individuals with SMI/SED to prevent or address future crises. Here is the link to the recording and the presentation slides.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Emotional CPR - An Evidence-Based Support for Individuals with Serious Mental Illness and Serious Emotional Disorder and Their Families (June 23rd, 2025)
Emotional CPR is an educational program that teaches the skills to assist others through an emotional crisis through Connecting, empowering, and Revitalizing. SAMHSA has included Emotional CPR as an evidence-based mental health awareness training program that can be useful for healthcare professionals, peers support specialists, and clinicians. Individuals living with serious mental illness (SMI) or serious emotional disturbance (SED) tend to experience more frequent instances of emotional crisis than others. The behavioral health and healthcare providers, school staff, employers, friends, and family members of individuals with SMI and SED can learn strategies and tools to support them in these moments of crisis by completing the Emotional CPR training. Get an introduction to some of these skills and learn how Emotional CPR has positively impacted individuals with SMI/SED and their families from Emotional CPR’s Director of Training and Engagement and Coordinator for Allies of Indiana at the National Empowerment Center, Kimberly Ewing. She shares what an emotional crisis looks like, a brief overview of the skills that are taught in-depth to those who complete the training, and why we know that Emotional CPR works. Here is the link to the recording and the presentation slides.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Collective Impact: Working Together to Support Individuals with Serious Mental Illness and Serious Emotional Disturbance and Their Families (June 17th, 2025)
SAMHSA engages with "local governments, organizations, and tribal and community leaders to create a comprehensive and integrated system of care that advances collective impact and fosters healthier and safer environments for all children, youth, and families” (SAMHSA Strategic Plan 2023-2026). SAMHSA knows that when stakeholders collaborate and work in unison towards a singular goal, the outcomes are stronger and engagement is deeper, because the individuals with serious mental illness and serious emotional disturbance (SMI/SED) who create new programs, resources, tools, practices, and strategies to address their treatment and recovery needs are involved from the start to finish of a project. Senior Advisor at the Collective Impact Forum Paul Schmitz has coached organizations, agencies, and communities to come together to form a common agenda, establish shared measurement to track progress towards a goal, integrate all participants’ perspectives, and engage in continuous productive communication to create collective impact that is stronger than the efforts of one organization alone. Collective impact is a powerful model of change that can transform the behavioral health systems individuals with SMI/SED navigate to become more effective for those individuals, their families, providers, and other systems staff. Here is the link to the recording and the presentation slides.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Informal and Formal Family Peer Support: The Impact and the Evidence (July 30th, 2024)
In a panel discussion moderated by NFF Executive Director Dr. Lynda Gargan, presenters will use their lived and professional expertise to discuss how the inclusion of person-centered, family-driven approaches to behavioral health support, such as family peer support, lead us towards a society where all families have access to high quality, holistic mental health support. Family peers are able to connect families with resources and services and co-create person-centered, family-driven plans that support the family in reaching their goals. Here are the links to the recording and the presentation slides.
SAMHSA Sponsored Discussion: Passing the Torch - Children's Mental Health Acceptance Week Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
(May 8th, 2024)
Children's Mental Health Acceptance Week, previously known as Awareness week, has a long history. The campaign began in Missouri in 1992. Over the next five years, several more states started their own celebrations, and the National Federation of Families took the campaign national. This is a rich discussion about the history, evolution, and future of this important campaign as we pass the torch from SAMHSA's mental health champion Liz Sweet (retired) to Carol Cecil (incumbent). Here are the links to the recording and presentation Slides.
2024 SAMHSA Sponsored Webinar Series: Person-Centered, Family-Driven Mental Health and Substance Use Support
Speak Up: Person-Centered Language for Individuals with Mental Health and Substance Use Challenges (May 2024)
Choosing the right words when talking about mental health and substance use challenges, as well as the people facing them, is crucial! Our language can influence our beliefs and attitudes, which in turn, affect our behavior and societal norms. Hear panelists with lived experience discuss the importance of moving from mental health and substance use awareness to acceptance in part through changing the language we use to talk about behavioral health challenges. Here is the link to the recording and presentation slides.
Cutting-Edge Practice Skills for the Family Peer Workforce (November 2023)
For a family member or caregiver, their child is a child regardless of age. When a child becomes an adult, the family/caregiver relationships, services, systems, and legal worlds to support them change. Families and caregivers who are supporting their adult children are faced with navigating the adult systems with their adult child. For Family Peer Support to be effective and meaningful across the lifespan, it must be broad and adaptable for all age groups. The Family Peer Specialist role supports families and caregivers as they navigate systems and support their children throughout their lives. This training provided Family Peer Specialists (FPS) and the Family Peer Workforce with skills and tools to support families navigating child- and family-serving systems in their communities with their children of any age.
Family Engagement in School Mental Health (September 2023)
Families and schools don’t always have the same ideas of what family engagement looks like. In this webinar we will detail ways to bring families and schools together on the concept of “family engagement”. Family engagement is a collaborative and strengths-based process through which the workforce, families, and children build positive and goal-orientated relationships. It is a shared responsibility of families and school staff at all levels that require mutual respect for the roles and the strengths each has to offer. With successful family partnerships, schools can move from family involvement to family engagement. Here are links to the recording and presentation slides.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Including and Elevating Fathers in Family Mental Health Support (June 2023)
Dr. James C. Rodriguez and his team at the Fathers and Families Coalition of America have used their extensive lived experience and expertise as clinicians and family members to create a variety of professional development opportunities and an international conference to increase the knowledge and skills around family mental health and substance use support not only for fathers and families, but also for those who support them. Join us to hear Dr. Rodriguez’s story of using his experience as a father and clinician to address the needs he saw in state and federal systems, as well as individual and family mental health and substance use support. Listen to the webinar recording here.
Marijuana: What Parents, Schools & the Healthcare Workforce Need to Know (May 2023)
Whether a young person has not yet tried marijuana, has begun to use it, or uses it regularly, the guidance and information provided in this webinar can help. The teen and early adult years are when children are most vulnerable to starting marijuana use and to its harmful effects. In the context of more and more states legalizing the drug for adult nonmedical use, marijuana use is becoming more normalized, and its risks are becoming more commonly overlooked. This is despite the rising potency of the drug, new modes of using it, and the mounting research evidence of its risks to young people's health and well-being. Here are links to the presentation recording, slides, and Q & A.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Supporting Family Members with Co-Occurring Diagnoses (May 2023)
Learn skills that help clinicians effectively engage families to support individuals with co-occurring diagnoses, including serious mental illness, and/or serious emotional disturbance. Hear how families serve as natural supports in the recovery journey and learn about the tools and strategies Family Peer Specialists use to support families of individuals with co-occurring diagnoses. Watch the recording here.
SAMHSA-Sponsored NFF Webinar: Family Engagement Strategies for Clinicians (April 2023)
Learn about the importance of natural support in recovery orientated care and planning with Dr. Lynda Gargan, Executive Director of the National Federation of Families, and Janis Tondora, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine. Watch the recording here.