ACF’s Commitment to Behavioral Health

En Español (PDF)

Supporting the behavioral health of children, families, and youth is an essential priority for the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). We see youth and families facing mental health challenges, substance use struggles, and high levels of stress. In partnership with federal, state, tribal, territorial, and local partners, as well as youth and families themselves, we have — through prioritizing actions and investments — further integrated behavioral health support and services
  
  

 into existing supports for youth and families. This enables us to promote behavioral health, foster recovery, cultivate resilience, and strengthen overall well-being among individuals and communities across the country.

I’m proud of the work ACF has done — and will continue to do — in partnership with all of you to address the President’s Strategy to Address our National Mental Health Crisis
  
  

 and the HHS Roadmap for Behavioral Health Integration
  
  

. I’d like to highlight in this email some of our work and accomplishments to improve behavioral health for children, youth, and families.

ACF is committed to centering and partnering with youth, families, and communities and learning from their experiences and expertise as we transform behavioral health in this country. The ACF team and I have regularly listened to, engaged with, and co-developed several behavioral health resources. These engagements have informed behavioral health activities, policy, and communications to better reach and serve children, youth, parents, and caregivers.

A few examples of ACF’s engagements include:

As part of this commitment, we recently launched our ACF and Behavioral Health webpage to expand access to resources for communities, parents and caregivers, teens and young adults, tribes, grantees, and service providers. Included online are resources to support the prevention, treatment, and recovery from behavioral health conditions; recognize, manage, and support children’s mental health needs; and address substance use during pregnancy. We have also dedicated a webpage specifically for early childhood behavioral health resources.

I encourage you to share these resources within your networks and to note that near the top center of the webpage is a tool to translate the information into a variety of languages; ACF is committed to promoting language access. In the coming months, we will be making additional changes and adding new resources, including several Spanish language resources.

We are working with partners across the federal government to increase access to culturally and linguistically relevant support for youth and families served by ACF programs.

A few examples of ACF’s efforts to improve access to culturally and linguistically relevant resources include:

ACF has been a partner in launching the first-ever HHS Children and Youth Resilience Challenge
  
  

, which is investing in innovative, community-led solutions to advance the mental health of children and youth. Later this month, ACF will be announcing finalists for Phase 1 of the Challenge to support the mental health of children.

Last year, we partnered with Instituto del Desarrollo de la Juventud
  
  

 and the U.S. Census Bureau to develop new solutions to enhance children’s resilience to adversity in Puerto Rico
  
  

 (PDF). The collaborative process led by The Opportunity Project brought together youth, tech, academic, and community partners to address the challenge by building public-facing products informed by open federal data.

ACF values and welcomes your partnership to support behavioral health of children, youth, and families. We are in this work together.

With thanks for your leadership,

January Contreras

Assistant Secretary

Metadata-only record linking to the original dataset. Open original dataset below.