The Georgia Parent Support Network (GPSN) aims to enhance family and caregiver participation, voice, leadership, and empowerment to effect systems change and improve the quality of mental health services statewide through leadership of family and caregiver-focused organizations and participation in community collaboratives. Additionally, the network is working to increase family-to-family connectedness and to reduce family feelings of isolation. GPSN supports family-to-family peer support models focused on advocating for and working with families that need assistance in navigating the behavioral health, juvenile justice, child welfare, and education systems, and ensure that they have access to services that meet the identified needs of their children and are inclusive of meaningful family involvement.

The Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health at the Georgia Health Policy Center is working with GPSN to strategically identify measurements and implement data collection processes to evaluate Georgia’s Family and Youth Driven Statewide Family Network Family and Youth Driven Statewide Network. Data sources include administrative and network activity data (e.g., trainings, meetings, and event sign-in records, registrations, and materials), as well as interviews with GPSN stakeholders and participants. The Center of Excellence will also provide ongoing technical assistance concerning data collection, completeness, and fidelity. The evaluation will provide quarterly performance reports to GPSN and support annual reporting to ensure implementation is occurring in a manner supportive of goals and objectives.

Behavioral Health

Research & Evaluation