Technical Assistance Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is accepting an application to supplement and expand grant activities funded under the Technical Assistance Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention (TAC-MHPYVP) cooperative agreement. The available funds will extend technical assistance services to Project Linking Actions to Unmet Needs of Children’s Health (Project LAUNCH) grantees who will be newly funded in FY 2009. The TAC-MHPYVP will continue to provide an array of technical assistance services that will improve the effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of all Project LAUNCH grant funded projects, not just those funded under the FY 2008 cooperative agreement. To maximize and ensure that technical assistance services are uniform in design and intent, and to ensure effectiveness and efficiency, eligibility is limited to the current grantee (Education Development Center Inc.). Project LAUNCH supports a vision of communities in which families participate in a seamless set of local programs, supports, and services that promote healthy early childhood development and supportive family environments. The Project LAUNCH grant program provides funds to localities through state agencies in order to plan for and build these integrated and comprehensive health/behavioral health prevention and promotion programs, practices, and services. Programs are administered by a partnership between local mental health, primary health care, substance abuse prevention, social services, and early childhood/ elementary educational systems. At a minimum the funds awarded will be used to conduct and expand upon the following activities: * Providing multifaceted technical assistance services across a wide variety of topics. * Providing centralized administration, management, and coordination of TA services. * Providing localized site specific and cross site technical assistance in a variety of formats and media. * Establishing processes for identifying best practices and resource development and sharing these across all grantee sites. * Providing technical assistance that demonstrates competency with respect to all types of diversity, e.g., age, gender, culture. * Creating linkages for Project LAUNCH grantees with state mental health directors and state child and maternal health directors. * Providing communications technical assistance to Project LAUNCH grantees. The TAC-MHPYVP cooperative agreement is authorized under Section 520A of the Public Health Service Act, as amended. This announcement addresses Healthy People 2010 focus area 18 (Mental Health and Mental Disorders).