National Center for Organizational Development and Sustainability

Statewide Family Networks

Statewide Family Network Grants

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Center for Mental Health Services funded 42 Statewide Family Network Grants (SFN) for 2007-10. The purpose of this program is to enhance State capacity and infrastructure to be more oriented to the needs of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances and their families. Statewide Family Network Grants is one of SAMHSA’s infrastructure grant programs. SAMHSA’s Infrastructure Grants support an array of activities to help the grantee build a solid foundation for delivering and sustaining effective mental health services.

Recognizing that each SFN will start from a unique point in developing infrastructure and will serve populations/communities with specific needs, SFN’s pursue diverse strategies and methods to achieve their infrastructure development and capacity expansion goals.

Program Goals
The goals of Statewide Family Network Grants are to:

  1. Strengthen organizational relationships
  2. Foster leadership and business management skills among families of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbance.
  3. Identify and address the technical assistance needs of children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances and their families. To achieve this goal, the program assists family members around the country to work with policy makers and service providers to improve services for children and adolescents with serious emotional disturbances and their families.

The Statewide Family Network Program is designed to ensure that families are the catalysts for transforming the mental health and related systems in their State by strengthening coalitions among family members and between family members, policymakers and service providers, recognizing that family members are the best and most effective change agents.

Allowable Activities
Statewide Family Network Grant funds must be used primarily to support infrastructure development, including the following types of activities:

  • Needs assessment
  • Strategic planning
  • Financing/coordination of funding streams
  • Organizational/structural change (e.g., to create locus of responsibility for a specific issue/population, or to increase access to, or efficiency of, services)
  • Development of interagency coordination mechanisms
  • Network development
  • Policy development to support needed service system improvements (e.g., rate-setting activities, establishment of standards of care, development/revision of credentialing, licensure, or accreditation requirements)
  • Quality improvement efforts
  • Performance measurement development
  • Workforce development (e.g., training, support for licensure, credentialing, or accreditation)
  • Data infrastructure