Take Survey 3 (June 16-30) on draft recommendations for expanding comprehensive P-25 BH offerings in WA State
Survey Details:
Time to complete: 20-25 minutes
Survey link follows below
Before You Start
Before you answer the questions, please read the information below. This explains what Washington Thriving is thinking about doing and why. You can look back at this information while answering the survey questions.
What Is Washington Thriving Working On?
Washington Thriving is working on a plan to make Washington State's behavioral health system work better for pregnant people, babies, kids, teens, and young adults (ages 0-25) and their caregivers and families – so they can get what they need when they need it and thrive.
This includes making sure the system:
Is truly guided by the people it serves
Makes getting help straightforward and respectful
Adapts to each person's unique situation
Ensures fairness and cultural safety for all
Uses information to get smarter over time
Builds well-being before problems develop
Strengthens natural support networks
Builds widespread awareness and understanding
Has all parts work together smoothly
Ensures the right help is available to everyone
The Strategic Plan: Three Connected Goals
The Strategic Plan – currently being developed – focuses on three important and connected goals to shift from how things work today to achieving the lasting change Washingtonians want to see:
Goal 1: Build Stronger System Infrastructure
Build a stronger system foundation that will deliver what young Washingtonians and their families need
Goal 2: Create Better Services and Programs
Create more and better services and programs for young people and their families to meet their needs
Goal 3: Embed Important Values
Make sure values and principles important to Washingtonians are built into how care is provided and how the system operates
All three parts work together to create real change across the whole system. The Strategic Plan delivered by November 2025 will include specific recommendations within each of these 3 areas. If the plan succeeds in these key areas, it will create lasting positive change for young people and their families across the state.
Why This Survey Focuses on Better Services and Programs (Goal 2)
This survey focuses on Goal 2: making sure young people, their caregivers and families, and communities have all the different types of behavioral health support people need.
This means having programs that:
Teach people how to stay mentally healthy and focus on wellness
Help catch problems early before things get worse
Provide treatment options from basic counseling to hospital care when someone is in crisis
Offer residential services when people need care outside the home
Having all of these services available is important because young people and families have different needs at different times, and everyone deserves to get the right kind of help when they need it most.
This goal matters because when communities have a complete range of services, people get help at the right time and in the right way. This prevents small problems from becoming big ones, helps people get stable faster, and saves money by avoiding costly emergency situations.
(A previous survey covered Goal 1, and a future survey coming soon will ask similar questions about Goal 3)
What Success Looks Like
Getting this goal right for Washingtonians would mean creating a seamless network of behavioral health services and support that follow people from before birth through age 25, and support their families every step of the way.
In every community - from big cities to small rural towns - people would know where to go for help and could actually get it. This means having mental health education in schools, wellness programs that help people manage stress before it becomes overwhelming, and easy-to-find information about available services and supports.
Early help would be everywhere. School counselors, primary care doctors, and community workers would be trained to spot warning signs early and connect young people to help right away.
Treatment options would match what people need. Someone dealing with mild anxiety might get counseling at a community center, while someone in crisis could access immediate help through mobile crisis teams or walk-in centers. Young people with severe mental illness would have access to intensive outpatient programs, residential treatment, or hospital care as needed.
No one would fall through the cracks. After a young person leaves the hospital or finishes treatment, they'd have ongoing support like peer counselors, housing assistance, job training, or medication management to help them stay stable.
It would work for everyone - with services available in different languages, culturally appropriate care for different communities, and options that work for people with disabilities or transportation challenges.
The key would be coordination - all these services would work together like a team instead of operating separately.
Creating a Complete Safety Net
To ensure young people, their caregivers and families get the right help at the right time, we need to build a comprehensive array of behavioral health offerings (education, promotion, prevention, early identification, treatment and support) that covers every level of need from pregnancy through age 25 in Washington State.
Right now, there are too many gaps in what's available:
Some communities have great prevention programs but no crisis services
Others have hospitals but no follow-up support
Many places lack services that match how different families and cultures approach mental health and healing
Young people and their caregivers and families shouldn't have to piece together their own care or go without help because the right type of service doesn't exist in their area or doesn't fit their needs and values.
Emerging Recommendations for Better Services and Programs
The following are the developing recommendations for improving Washington State's behavioral health services for people from pregnancy through age 25.
(A previous survey covered Goal 1, and a future survey coming soon will share more about Goal 3)
Set 1: Support Based on Young Peoples' Ages and Stages
Recommendation A: Help pregnant people and new parents with good mental health and wellness
Why this matters: Having a baby is a major life change that affects mental health and wellness for all new parents. While many new parents also struggle with depression, anxiety, or substance use, the focus should be on supporting overall wellness during this important time. All pregnant people and new parents benefit from mental health support, but many don't get the help they need because of shame, lack of screening, or not enough specialized services. In Washington, depression and substance use are the top cause of death for new mothers.
How this helps the bigger plan: When we support parents' mental health early, we help babies develop better and prevent bigger problems later that would need more expensive help. Supporting wellness during pregnancy and early parenthood also creates the foundation for a prevention-focused system by showing how early support works better than waiting for crisis. When healthcare providers learn to screen for and support behavioral health during pregnancy, they build skills that can be used throughout the whole system.
Recommendation B: Keep investing in programs that support babies, young children, and their caregivers and families (ages 0-5)
Why this matters: The first few years of life are when children's brains grow the fastest. Help during this time works better than help later, but Washington doesn't have consistent screening to catch problems early. We need to focus on helping parents and caregivers learn skills, not just on diagnosing problems.
How this helps the bigger plan: When we support well-being in the earliest years, we can avoid many problems down the road. When we catch and help with problems early, we can prevent bigger issues later and create a model for how different systems (such as healthcare, childcare, and family support services) should work together at all ages.
Recommendation C: Give schools (K-12) clear guidance on their role in supporting school-aged students' behavioral health and wellness
Why this matters: Schools are where most kids spend a lot of their time growing up, making them an important place to reach young people. Good mental health and wellness helps kids be ready for school and able to learn better. However, school staff don't have clear guidance on what their role should be in supporting students' mental health. This leads to missed chances to help early and poor connections to specialized services.
How this helps the bigger plan: When schools know their role in young peoples' mental health, they become important hubs that can reach virtually all children and connect them to other services when needed. This builds on the early childhood foundation by creating the next connection point as kids grow up. Schools also become a model for how community settings can identify problems early and connect families to help, which can be copied in other community places.
Recommendation D: Create better behavioral health services specifically designed for the needs and experiences of teens (ages 13-17) and young adults (ages 18-25)
Why this matters: Young people face big disruptions in care as they become adults because child and adult services are completely separate. Insurance changes, providers aren't trained for this age group, and there aren't enough specialized services. This happens right when many serious mental health problems first show up.
How this helps the bigger plan: Better services for teens and young adults designed for their specific needs show how different systems can work together and create a model for serving people throughout their lives. This fixes the biggest break in our current system and creates new ways for child and adult services to coordinate that can be used at other transition points. When we solve this age gap, we prove the whole system can work together instead of in separate pieces.
Recommendation E: Bring behavioral health supports to places where young people and families naturally go
Why this matters: Places where young people naturally hang out are great opportunities to help before problems get serious, but these places aren't being used enough for mental health and wellness support. These places are especially important for young people who are often left out or in situations where schools can't easily reach them or aren't the most natural places of support.
How this helps the bigger plan: Using community spaces creates more ways for people to get help without feeling ashamed and reaches young people, their caregivers and families where they already are. This transforms the system from only being available in clinical buildings to being woven into community life. When behavioral health support becomes part of normal community spaces, it removes barriers and shows how the system can adapt to meet people where they are rather than expecting people to come to the system.
Set 2: Essential Support Functions
Recommendation F: Create easy-to-find places where caregivers and families can get information and help finding services, no matter where they first go looking
Why this matters: Young people, caregivers, and families often don't know where to go to find the help they need. We need to do more to make that information easy to find no matter where people first look.
How this helps the bigger plan: Good navigation transforms separate programs into a connected system by providing personalized guidance during vulnerable times. This creates the first piece of the support structure that makes all other services work better. When families can easily find help, it connects all the age-based services (from pregnancy through young adulthood) and community-based supports into one network that families can actually use.
Recommendation G: Make family support and advocacy its own official service
Why this matters: Major life transitions and behavioral health challenges create vulnerability and make it hard to navigate services, but families often face these situations without dedicated support. Worse, families experience blame and feel like they're fighting against the system that is supposed to be serving them. This hurts their mental health and makes the problems worse.
How this helps the bigger plan: Having people whose job is to support families makes sure that parents and caregivers get the help and support they need to effectively support their young people. This means the whole family is ready when help is available. This creates the second piece of the support structure that works together with navigation to empower families. When families have both information (navigation) and advocacy support, they become true partners in the system instead of passive "beneficiaries", which changes how the whole system operates.
Recommendation H: Make care coordination its own official service
Why this matters: Young people, caregivers, and families currently have to piece together their own support across multiple disconnected systems with inconsistent information, repetitive assessments, and fragmented services, creating confusion, overwhelm, delays, and barriers to effective care.
How this helps the bigger plan: This approach helps young people, caregivers, and families get coordinated help instead of confusing, separate services. Young people are better prepared because someone knows what they need and the right order to get help, which makes those services more effective. This completes the three-part support structure (navigation, family advocacy, and care coordination) that transforms how the system works. When all three pieces work together, they turn a confusing maze of separate programs into a connected network that wraps around each family.
Set 3: Services for When Higher-Level Needs Are Identified
Recommendation I: Create more flexible middle-level help options before young people reach crisis
Why this matters: Washington doesn't have enough middle-level (or mid-intensity) options between basic counseling and hospital care. This means young people either don't get enough help, get help that's too intense, or have to wait until their problems get much worse.
How this helps the bigger plan: Middle-level services give caregivers and families more choices so young people can get the right amount of help when they need it based on their individual needs. This creates the flexible pathway between early help (from schools and community spaces) and crisis services that allows people to step up or step down based on what they need. When people can get the right level of help at the right time, it prevents the system from only working in crisis mode and shows how all services can be connected in a step-by-step way.
Recommendation J: Build specialized services for young people with unique needs who aren't well-served by current offerings
Why this matters: Washington's system has big gaps for certain groups of young people. These gaps include missing services (like help at home, family addiction programs), not enough specialists trained for complex needs or different ages, and not enough places for kids to stay safely out of the home if they need that level of care.
How this helps the bigger plan: Filling these gaps and creating ways to show where other gaps might exist transforms the system from a bunch of separate programs with holes into a complete set of services that keeps improving and meeting new needs. This creates the system's ability to adapt and respond to any population that gets left out. When we build this adaptive capacity, the system becomes able to identify and fill new gaps as they emerge, which means it can evolve to serve everyone instead of staying stuck with the same old limitations.
Recommendation K: Keep expanding crisis help, hospital care, and residential treatment for young people who can't be safely cared for at home
Why this matters: Washington still doesn't have enough crisis help, hospital beds, and residential treatment spots for the young people who need these services. This means kids get stuck in emergency rooms, have to go out-of-state for care, and wait so long that their problems get worse.
How this helps the bigger plan: Adding more crisis, hospital, and residential services means young people get the right help during emergencies and have good options to step down to less intensive care as they get better. This completes the high-end of the service range that works together with middle-level services (Recommendation I) to create smooth pathways up and down based on need. When crisis services connect well to step-down options, it stops the revolving door pattern and shows how the most intensive services can be part of a coordinated system instead of isolated emergency responses.
Recommendation L: Improve ongoing support to help young people and families to stabilize and stay healthy
Why this matters: The current system doesn't have enough help for young people after crisis or treatment to stay healthy long-term. This creates a revolving door where kids get better for a while but then struggle again because they don't have ongoing support. Going home after long stays in hospitals or residential care is especially hard.
How this helps the bigger plan: Strong ongoing support completes the full range of services and changes the system from just handling crises to helping young people and their families get stable and stay well long-term, teaching them skills to handle things on their own. This creates the final piece of the connected system by ensuring that intensive services lead to lasting wellness instead of repeated crises. When ongoing support connects back to community-based and early intervention services, it completes the circle and transforms the system from crisis-focused to wellness-focused, which changes how everything else operates.
What Happens Next
This is the second of three surveys that aim to share all of the emerging recommendations under development (as drafts) for feedback.
Each recommendation that gets included in the final Strategic Plan will also include detailed information about how to actually make it happen. This will cover the practical steps needed to put each idea into action, the key things that help it succeed or cause it to fail, and real examples from Washington, other states, and across the country that we can learn from.
However, this survey isn't the place to share all of those still developing details. At this important point in recommendations development, Washington Thriving wants to hear your thoughts on what the main recommendations within this goal should focus on and what other important areas they should include.
Your input will help shape these recommendations as Washington Thriving develops the detailed action plans and starting points.