Peer-to-Peer California High School Pilot Demonstration

Peer-to-Peer California High School Pilot Demonstration

The Children’s Partnership and the Department of Health Care Services have partnered together to grant $8 Million Dollars to selected high schools across California to fund peer-to-peer programs. The Peer-to-Peer Pilot Demonstration aims to provide grantees with the funding, technical assistance and learning community to build peer-to-peer mental health programs on their individual school campuses. 

Schools that hold student populations with elevated risk for mental health challenges will carry priority for grants – this includes prioritizing communities of color whose youth have shown marked disparities in unmet mental health needs and poor outcomes, including suicide.

Peer support programs are an essential evidence-based strategy for supporting young people’s mental health. Youth from The Hope, Healing and Health Collective shared that greater investments in peer–to–peer programs would improve the opportunities for youth of color to connect and heal with members of their own communities and identities. Building on strategies laid out in our Advancing School-Based Mental Health policy brief, TCP is excited to steward an application process that will result in the selection of eight pilot sites across the state to build peer support programs that are culturally responsive to the needs of youth in those communities.

The grant application window is slated to open early December. Visit www.childrenspartnership.org to stay up-to-date on the pilot demonstration and grant application process. 

For more information contact rjones@childrenspartnership.org, Director, Peer-to-Peer Youth Mental Health.