The MidCoast Community Collaborative was created out of a community event hosted on January 26, 2023 called Change for MidCoast Students. The event was held to raise awareness of the child and youth mental health crisis and the impact on providers supporting children from birth to adulthood are experiencing in the MidCoast – over 200 community members attended creating an undeniable energy for change.
Since our January 26th event to raise awareness about the mental health crisis of our children and youth a backbone network has emerged that is working to continue to build cross-sector collaboration among Knox and Lincoln County individuals, businesses, school districts, and organizations to begin identifying and removing barriers that prevent collaboration and the ability for community members to access resources.
In June 2023, the Collaborative hosted a cross-sector partner event with over 90 attendees including professionals from the Governor’s office and other state departments. All of the attendees worked together to create a list of priorities for resource providers and caregivers. While there were a number of great suggestions, two themes jumped out loud and clear from our meeting: Convening and Making Change.
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Since our last convening on June 9th, we have continued to host small focus groups, lean into individual conversations, and work to integrate ourselves into communities to build relationships. We are beginning to better understand problems and challenges faced by community leaders, providers, youth, families and community members.. Members and partners have begun to understand gaps in services and are starting to create systems to bridge gaps and improve individual and collective effectiveness.
As we continue to work to connect all of our partners we would like to also highlight and share your work and events. If you have any opportunities that you would like to broadcast to the larger Collaborative network, please consider sharing them via our Facebook group!