National Alliance on Mental Illness
Child and Adolescent Support

NAMI Child-Adolescent Action Center

NAMI's Child-Adolescent Action Center (CAAC) works to improve the lives of children and adolescents living with mental illnesses and their families through advocacy, support and education. We offer resources and technical assistance to NAMI affiliates at the state and local levels.

The Child-Adolescent Action Center focuses on mental health systems’ reform that promises to improve the lives of children and adolescents with mental illnesses and their families. Our goal is to build and support grassroots advocacy to ensure an expanded systems’ reform agenda at the local, state and national levels. Currently, CAAC is working in the following areas:

Ending the practice of forcing families to relinquish custody of their child to secure mental health services through federal legislation, changes in funding mechanisms for healthcare treatment and services, raising awareness about the issue and offering alternatives to policymakers to help end this practice;

Focusing the policy debate on ensuring the early identification of mental illnesses and early intervention with effective treatment and services so that children do not lose critical developmental years to an undiagnosed illness;

Ensuring improved treatment outcomes for children and adolescents by advancing promising practices and evidence-based practices in treatment and services;

Focusing attention on the crisis of youth with mental illnesses in the juvenile justice system and the failure of schools to properly address the academic and functional needs of students with mental illnesses;

Partnering with organizations focused on children and adolescents, with a focus on diverse communities and eliminating existing healthcare disparities;

Strengthening support for the work of NAMI state and affiliate leaders on child and adolescent issues;

Helping to educate all child-serving professionals, especially school professionals, about the early warning signs of mental illnesses in children and adolescents to help address the fact that nearly 80 percent of youth with mental health needs fail to be identified and to receive treatment and services. We recently expanded our Parents and Teachers as Allies program, which is a two-hour in-service program that focuses on educating school professionals about mental illnesses and how best to intervene;

Supporting parents and caregivers of children with mental illnesses by lobbying federal and state legislators and by providing information, referrals and resources to families and youth.