Policy Codesign for Washington Thriving

The Challenge

Behavioral health challenges for youth are urgent and widespread. Up to 1 in 5 young people in the U.S. have a reported mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder, yet about half of those with treatable behavioral health disorders do not receive adequate treatment. Adolescent substance use disorders affect over a million youth in the U.S. each year, but only 10% of youth report receiving substance use prevention programming.

About the Initiative

Policy Codesign is a participatory, creative process to help people in communities learn from each other and explore local policy solutions to complex problems. The Policy Codesign process produces a policy recommendation and implementation plan tailored to a particular community’s context. Because the recommendations and plan are created by community members who have both professional expertise and lived-experience with the issues they are addressing, Policy Codesign produces results that are both effective and sustainable.

The Process

This policy codesign process is part of the implementation of first initiatives tied to the Washington Thriving statewide strategic plan for equitable behavioral health for children, youth, and young adults.

In alignment with proposed legislation (HB 1634), CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health Policy partnered with the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to launch the co-development of a statewide training and technical assistance framework for K–12 schools to support student behavioral health, with partners in the broader health system.

This work focuses on helping schools navigate the complex landscape of behavioral health: supporting earlier identification of student needs, improving access to services and supports, and making better use of available resources and funding.

The Plan

As part of the first initiatives to implement the Strategic Plan, Washington Thriving has established a partnership with the CoLab for Community and Behavioral Health at the University of Washington (CoLab). Over the next 18 months, this partnership will help advance two of the first initiatives while also trying out an iterative, collaborative policy development, evaluation, and learning approach that can be built into the envisioned System of Care over time.

As part of Washington Thriving’s first initiatives, CoLab will begin work on two important facets of the System of Care:

K-12 student well-being: Aligned with proposed legislation (HB1634), CoLab will work in partnership with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) as the sponsoring organization to co-develop a statewide technical assistance framework to support schools navigating the complex landscape of behavioral health, which is a critical factor in students’ learning readiness and well-being. Through an inclusive co-design process, CoLab and OSPI will work alongside students, families, educators, community and state partners to ensure that technical assistance responds to real needs on the ground, including by improving identification of and access to available behavioral health services, supports, and funding streams.

System-level outcomes for System of Care infrastructure: To support Washington Thriving’s future performance measurement and accountability, CoLab will follow a similar inclusive co-design process to identify meaningful outcomes and metrics that reflect Washington Thriving values and implementation philosophy, are feasible to track and measure, and provide insight into how the system is performing.