Family-to-Family
Health Care Information and Education
Centers
CONNECTICUT
Grant Information
Name of Grantee
FAVOR,
Inc.
Title of Grant
Connecticut Family-to-Family Health Information Network
Type of Grant
Family-to-Family
Health Care Information and Education
Centers
Amount of Grant
$165,000
Year Original Funding
Received
2005
Contact Information
Hal Gibber, Executive Director
FAVOR, Inc.
2138 Silas Deane Highway, Suite
103
Rocky Hill, CT 06067
860-563-3232 ext. 201
halgibber@favor-ct.org
Subcontractor(s)
None.
Target Population(s)
Children with special health
care needs (CSHCN), including those with mental health needs and their
families, as well as providers, state agencies, and policy makers.
Goals
- Develop the Connecticut
Family-to-Family Health Information Network and promote the Network across
the State.
- Provide training,
advocacy, and support to Connecticut
families of CSHCN.
- Provide information
and resources to providers.
- Develop policy
responses to issues identified by families of CSHCN in Connecticut and implement a policy
agenda.
Activities
- Provide outreach
through printed, electronic, telephone, and face-to-face contact.
- Engage families
through provision of direct support to meet their immediate needs.
- Provide health
information specialist training annually.
- Convene quarterly
meetings of the Family-to-Family Grant collaborators, regional medical
homes, and others to discuss system issues related to the delivery of
health care to Connecticut's
CSHCN.
- Disseminate fact
sheets and toolkits to parents and providers.
- Train Family-to-Family
health information specialists.
- Provide supervision
and ongoing training to the health information specialists.
- Provide direct
individual Family-to-Family support, information, and training using a
toolkit developed by the project.
- Document contacts,
strategies, and issues through data collection using the Family Voices
Solutions Database and anecdotal data.
- Conduct face-to-face
meetings with the project staff and management team and include staff from
the Regional
Medical Home
Support Centers
and other medical home providers in the State.
- Disseminate printed
material, including outreach material, toolkits, and fact sheets.
- Use the data collected
to formulate policy agendas.
- Promote
Family-to-Family policy issues with state legislators at the agency's
annual legislative breakfast at the Capitol.
- Convene an annual
legislative breakfast at the Capitol to promote the legislative agenda to
policymakers.
- Track bills,
legislation, and policy changes that are implemented as a result of
project recommendations and action.
Abstract
FAVOR, a statewide family-directed advocacy
organization for children's mental health, will administer the Connecticut
Family-to-Family Health Information Network. The project will be operated in
collaboration with the Connecticut Family Support Council, Easter Seals, Yale
Center for Children With
Special Health Care Needs, the Connecticut Department of Public Health, and
Bridgeport Child FIRST Program.
The project will provide support, information, and
advocacy to families in Connecticut
who have CSHCN, including children with mental
health needs. The primary outcome of this project will be to assist families
and providers in navigating the public and private health care financing
service delivery systems and to develop appropriate strategies and policies to
improve these systems. The project will establish a statewide network of
specialists who will be directly supporting families. These specialists will
provide technical assistance, information, and direct advocacy to 360 families
and will develop training materials and a toolkit that can be broadly
disseminated to parents in the State. All information will be utilized to
formulate recommendations for policy change, and families will be mobilized to
promote those policy change recommendations.