WestEd experts Lupita Alcalá and Jason Willis will participate in two sessions at the 6th Annual Breaking Barriers Interagency Symposium, April 19–21, 2022.
After two years of holding events online, the three-day symposium is offering on-site sessions in Sacramento, California. This year’s theme: “From I To We: Connecting Community, Schools, and System of Care.”
The symposium is designed to facilitate and elevate the work of state and county leaders and interagency collaboratives, advocates, and other stakeholders toward developing a comprehensive, accessible, and sustainable system of care for children and their families in California. Sessions focus on how communities, organizations, and agencies can better serve youth through Four Pillars of Shared Leadership, Shared Data, Shared Finance, and Shared Community.
WestEd staff will be participating in two sessions at the symposium. In both sessions, WestEd will lead conversations about how interagency collaboration between child-serving agencies at the local and state levels can contribute to sustainable financing to advance California’s investment in schools and communities.
Our first session will provide a high-level overview of the newly published Supporting California’s Children Through a Whole Child Approach: A Field Guide for Creating Integrated, School-Based Systems of Care. Co-author Lupita Alcalá will be joined by partners from across the education and health care sectors to share their thoughts on how the guide can help break down silos to meet the needs of California’s children and families.
The national and California funding landscape has brought our state’s child-serving agencies to the precipice of revolutionizing the access and delivery of high-quality services. In our second session, Jason Willis will lead a panel of cross-sector resource and financing experts to discuss the future of funding sustainable programs to support children’s integrated care across child-serving agencies. This session will offer concrete next steps to provide the necessary funding configurations and sequences to make that revolution a reality in practice.
View a list of WestEd’s sessions below.
Wednesday, April 20
Deep Dive Session: Shared Implementation Through Shared Leadership: California Integrated Care Field Guide
Time & Location: 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
Presenters:
- Lupita Alcalá, Director, Education Policy and Outcomes, Resource Planning, WestEd
- Amanda Dickey, Esq., Executive Director, Government Relations, Santa Clara County Office of Education
- Elizabeth Estes, Founder, Breaking Barriers
- Hayin Kimner, Managing Director, CA Community Schools Learning Exchange; Senior Policy and Research Fellow, Policy Analysis for California Education, Stanford University
- Richard Knecht, Managing Partner, Integrated Human Services Group
- Mike Lombardo, Executive Director Prevention Supports and Services, Placer County Office of Education
- Chris Stoner-Mertz, Chief Executive Officer, California Alliance of Child and Family Services/Catalyst Center
Thursday, April 21
Expert Panel: Building Shared Sustainable Financing for Children and Youth
Time & Location: 2:30 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Moderator: Jason Willis, Area Director, Strategic Resource Planning & Implementation, WestEd
Panelists:
- Lisa Eisenberg, Policy Director, California School-Based Health Alliance
- Mike Lombardo, Executive Director Prevention Supports and Services, Placer County Office of Education
- Chris Stoner-Mertz, Chief Executive Officer, California Alliance of Child and Family Services/Catalyst Center
- Chris Williams, Director, School-Based Mental Health and Wellness, Sacramento County Office of Education