Mapping child-friendly services to make a referral

One way to respond to the early warning signs of mental health issues is to make a referral to access child friendly services in our communities. Ashley, will you tell us more about that? As I said earlier, it’s normal for children to experience distress, especially during difficult times, times of crisis. And it’s important, that they seek extra support when this distress becomes too much. And in order to help children seek this extra support, you want to know what services are available in your community, and we’re going to refer to that as making a referral. So making a referral to an outside service such as mental healthcare, a social service and education service.

And the way to do that is to know what child friendly services are available in your own community. So we’ve created a template for you that you can use to map out these services. And also this is the first step in six steps that are going to help you to make a successful referral. So read about that below in an article and also Carly is going to give us an example of child friendly services that she’s mapped out in her community. I’m mostly in role as an educator when I’m working with children, so I’m going to fill out my template from that perspective.

And I actually don’t know this information for my community off the top of my head, so I’m going to do some internet research and I’m going to text some of my teacher friends in the neighborhood and try to get their recommendations. It’s going to be great because I’m going to have all this information in one place. And now you’re going to have the chance to do this too.