What people are doing to support Youth & Families?
- Care Packages: food, rental assistance, gift cards
- Surveys to assess for student/family needs
- Hearing that families need: mental health resources, help running errands, masks, funding, etc.
- Offering and/or coordinating mental health services
- Individual and group check ins with mentees
- Individual check-ins with families
- Some youth are expressing “check-in fatigue”; looking to find creative new ways to check in like providing video office hours
- Students leading teen mental health webinars
What are people doing to support mentors?
- Phone call check ins – Mentors are tired of video calls. Phones are harder to ignore
- Being really persistent in outreach attempts with mentors
- Checking in on Mentors’ well-being and their bandwidth to be mentors – not taking it personally if/when mentors are limited in their ability to continue mentoring right now
- Sending care packages to mentors (and then giving them a budget to also send a care package to their youth(s)/family(families).
- Virtual Training Offerings
- Offering resources on equipping mentors to support youth and families with their needs
- Incentivizing mentor (and match) participation in engagement activities
- Encouraging mentors to be involved in telling some feel good stories with the agency about their journey with their mentee.
- Continuing with quarterly mental health forums for mentors (they were doing this before the crisis and continuing it now)
- Creating lunch chats via virtual for mentors to check in
Tips & Advice from Angela Quinn (Guest Speaker – Crisis Clinician – Jefferson Center for Mental Health)
- Recording of Angela – LINK
- Talk with parenting adults about the importance of continuing to be in the mentoring relationship – ask for their support. Ask them for their observations of their child’s well-being
- Track youths’ mood, sleep, eating
- Offer yourself as a listening ear
- Use headphones, encourage clients to go for a walk while on the phone during mentoring sessions and/or counseling sessions
Still in Search of:
- Translation Services!!
- Call the Language Line (note: this may cost money) 800-752-6096 or visit their website: https://www.languageline.com
- Immigrant & Refugee Center of N. CO https://www.ircnoco.org/translation-services
- Resources for engaging/supporting students with racial injustice, particularly with the recent, traumatic news.
- Resource coming soon from Keelin McGill at I Have a Dream Boulder
Resources Discussed and Shared:
- Colorado Crisis Line:
- www.ColoradoCrisisServices.org
- Phone: 1-844-493-TALK (8255)
- Text ‘TALK’ to 38255
- Article: How to Build a “Psychological First Aid Kit”(Source: Outside Magazine) summarizes a lot of what Angela Quinn (Crisis Clinician – Jefferson Center for Mental Health) LINK
- Colorado COVID-19 Resources for immigrants and others (in both Spanish/English – Source: Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition) – LINK
- Resources for undocumented youth and families (Source: Betancourt Macias Family Scholarship Foundation) – LINK
- MENTOR Colorado Free Consulting (Technical Assistance): https://comentoring.org/program-resources/technical-assistance/
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