About Washington Thriving
What is Washington Thriving?
Washington Thriving is a collaborative statewide effort to develop a strategic plan that will transform the behavioral health system serving children, youth, and young adults from before they are born through age 25 when their brains are fully matured.
Centering lived experience. Envisioning the future. Leading the way.
The Vision
Every Washingtonian understands how behavioral health affects well-being and recognizes when young people need support.
Funding, providers and systems work together so that services are seamless, accessible, and adapt to changing needs.
Behavioral health services and supports:
Holistically address mental health, substance use, developmental, physical health, and co-occurring needs.
Connect into people’s communities where they spend time.
Are available when needed.
Are available for all developmental stages, all cultures and languages, in all parts of the state.
The Principles
The prenatal through age 25 behavioral health system in Washington:
Is informed by children, youth, caregivers, and families
Ensures that all doors lead to support
Offers services to meet the individual needs of children, youth, families, and caregivers
Is equitable, anti-racist, and culturally and linguistically responsive
Changes in response to new information
Invests in prevention and well-being
Includes families, caregivers, and communities as key contributors to well-being
Definition of behavioral health
Behavioral health involves the interaction between a person’s body, brain, and the people and places around them and includes the feelings and actions that can affect one’s overall well-being.
Behavioral health can:
Impact how a person relates to and interacts with their families and communities and maintain long-term positive relationships that are vital for well-being
Affects a person’s physical body and overall well-being in the same way that a short-term or long-term illness might
Stem from many things, including the stress and trauma they have experienced or experiencing or challenges with substances or other ways of coping that get in the way of overall well-being
Can include a broad range of diagnoses and can change or be exacerbated by lack of intervention
Coincide with other things, including the impacts of communities’ being under-resourced, homelessness, disruption of schooling, challenges finding employment, and youth being at risk of incarceration. These other things can be both a “cause of” or “result of” behavioral health challenges
Lead to children, youth, and young adults struggling to navigate life, maintain positive relationships, achieve their educational goals, and adapt to change
Intersect with intellectual and developmental disabilities and compound their behavioral health. Over time, as children and youth grow and develop, these challenges change
Be impacted even before birth and through exposure to maternal stress or substances and/or poor social and emotional connections during the earliest months and years of life
Information on how this definition was developed can be found here.
The Strategic Plan
Washington Thriving will result in a strategic plan that:
Provides a vision for the future of prenatal-through-age-25 behavioral health in Washington State.
Describes the current landscape of behavioral health needs and services, and identifies what’s missing.
Reflects the lived experience of people who seek support from the system and of those who provide support.
Provides a roadmap for building the envisioned system.
Estimates the cost and benefits of implementing the plan.
The Process
Summer and Fall 2024:
Aligning on a vision and understanding the current landscape.
Fall 2024 and Spring 2025:
Understanding what’s missing and developing the roadmap for how to close the gaps.
Spring 2025 and Summer 2025:
Estimating the costs and benefits of implementing this roadmap.
Washington Thriving Advisory Group
The Washington Thriving Advisory Group (previously called the Strategic Plan Advisory Group) is made up of young people, parents, caregivers, providers, agency representatives, and other system partners. This group is led by two co-chairs, Representative Lisa Callan and Diana Cockrell from the Health Care Authority.
The Advisory Group is a platform for diverse actors to find common ground and develop collective suggestions to improve the behavioral health landscape for individuals prenatal through age 25 and their families and caregivers. The group provides input to each workstream as they develop and then provides feedback on the resulting products. The Advisory Group will inform the decisions related to the Strategic Plan made by the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Work Group (CYBHWG). The public is welcome to observe Advisory Group meetings.
Three monthly discussion groups provide space for deeper dialogue among key groups: youth and young adults, parents and caregivers, and providers and other system partners. These meetings are open to participation by all.
Discussion Groups
Discussion groups are one-to-two-hour meetings open to the public that focus on sharing updates about the strategic plan and gathering feedback and suggestions on project outputs from specific populations.
Youth & Young Adults – Youth and young adults (ages 13-29) who have sought or received behavioral health supports or services in Washington
Parents & Caregivers - Individuals with lived experience/living experience as a parent or caregiver to an individual (age 0-25) who has sought or received behavioral health supports or services in Washington and/or have sought or experienced supports or services themselves during pregnancy through one year after birth
System Partners – Behavioral health providers, advocates, and others who support the prenatal through age 25 population and their families/caregivers
Frequently Asked Questions
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The Health Care Authority has been authorized by the legislature to administer the strategic planning budget and allocate staff to the strategic planning process. HCA staff are responsible for managing a slate of contractors with relevant expertise to the project.
Behavioral Health Catalyst, with philanthropic funding, works closely with the co-chairs, with HCA, and the assigned contractors to guide the work and to integrate the outputs from multiple workstreams into a compelling and coherent strategic plan.
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Health Management Associates is the lead contractor responsible for project management, coordination, and production of several other discrete deliverables.
Bloom Works is conducting a series of discovery sprints.
Full Frame Initiative is conducting community listening sessions and advising.
Mercer is conducting quantitative analysis of current supply and demand for behaviroal health services and supports, identifying relevant data as well as gaps, and developing a dashboard with key indicators to help with monitoring the behavioral system over time.
Experts associated with the University of Connecticut are contracted to provide insight and expertise from the experience of other states.
Pontifex Consulting is building a scenario modeling tool to help analyze tradeoffs and relative impact of various investments and interventions.