System of Care Stories

My name is Imani and I am the single parent of five children from the ages of two to twelve. Steven was my oldest and I had just moved into the projects. He started hanging out with the project youth. One day, I got a call that he had been locked up for breaking into Kmart and he was being held in the Philadelphia Youth Study Center. A few weeks later, he called to tell me he saw a boy being raped. Shortly after that, he had a court hearing, and I made a very hard decision to send him away. He was sent to a residential treatment facility inaccessible to me by public transportation. The lawyer did not want him to go away since he had never been in trouble before. I was concerned about his safety, and I did not want him hanging with his project pals. He spent a year at a residential treatment center and finished the eighth grade. After a year, he was released without my knowledge, and I was dismayed that I was not alerted about him returning home. I met … [Read more...] about Left on My Own

by Imani-MB

I am often in positions where my autonomy is deemed irrelevant, be it in hospitals, schools, my old family home, but the place with the most heightened sense of anxiety for me is with my previous partners. Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence regularly face this very hard question: do I tell people? And if so, who? This is something I chose to disclose after both my safety and the safety of others were put in danger. It was difficult for me, as I was a queer person and what he’d said and done to me had severely disconnected me from that part of myself. I lost track of who I was. Unfortunately, for LGBTQ+ youth, this is not the only challenge they face when it comes to Intimate Partner Violence. If you’re a young queer survivor, I hope you feel validated, seen and heard. If you’re a provider, here are 5 things you should know and radically accept in your work: Survivors don’t come in one model. I may not be in the perfect mold for what you considered to be a survivor, but I am still … [Read more...] about “5 Things about Queer Intimate Partner Violence You Should Know”

by Sawyer Keegan

Young people who have been touched by the juvenile justice system occupy many different levels within the behavioral health workplace. They are being hired for opportunities to serve in roles as peer support, family support, youth coordinators, specialists, managers, and other leadership staff. A critical goal of hiring individuals with lived experience in the juvenile justice system should be to enhance the work, the workplace, and the systems of care, and ultimately to enhance outcomes for youth and their families. But what happens when critical conversations and hard truths are avoided or prohibited? What happens when young people experience tokenism from systems and burnout from sharing and reliving their trauma over and over again?   In my role as a Youth Certified Peer Counselor, I have experienced and witnessed countless young people experience tokenism. In my experience developing youth committees and councils, I see youth voices in action but I rarely see real … [Read more...] about “We Need More Than Youth Voice . . . We Need Action!”

by Evelyn Clark, Change Consultant & Racial Equity Trainer

Elijah is a 23-year-old young adult living with autism and several other mental health challenges. He lives with his mother, Adaminah, in Philadelphia. Over the years, Elijah has struggled to get appropriate, responsive, and compassionate crisis care. Because of this, Adaminah has become a strong advocate not only for her own son but for all children, youth, and families living with behavioral health challenges. She currently works as a Family Engagement Specialist on the SAMHSA-funded National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Children, Youth, and Family Mental Health (NTTAC). Adaminah is also a member of a learning collaborative with Philadelphia’s Department of Behavior Health & Intellectual Disabilities Services (DBHIDS).   Elijah and Adaminah talked recently about his experience with crisis care and what could be done to make it better.  In this conversation, Elijah explains the fear, anger, and humiliation that he feels when crisis care doesn’t respect … [Read more...] about “5 Things Elijah Would Like You to Know”

by Elijah Tankersly & Adaminah Tankersly