Conference Program
Explore the featured presentations, breakout sessions, and exhibitors joining us for this year’s ACMH Annual Conference. This page is still being updated as we finalize additional details, so be sure to check back for more information!
Featured Presentations
Keynote – Connecting to Why: Why Knowing Isn’t Enough
Why do we really do the work we do? How do our own strengths show up in our daily lives? Therapist and speaker Jody Nelson explores how answering, owning, and staying connected to these questions can help professionals avoid burnout and stay energized through growing stress and workplace demands. This interactive conversation creates space to consider how personal purpose and unique strengths sustain the work we do.
A Conversation with Senator Stephanie Chang
We’re honored to welcome Senator Stephanie Chang, a longtime community advocate and Michigan legislator who has championed policies that strengthen communities and expand access to support. Sen. Chang will join us to discuss children and family mental health, the importance of strong community support, and creating systems where every family has the opportunity to thrive.
Lunch Panel: From Crisis to Community Action
This panel will explore how one community came together after experiencing devastating losses to create space for conversation, hope, and action. Panelists will share lessons learned about centering youth voice, building trusted relationships, connecting families to support, and turning community concern into practical solutions. Attendees will leave with ideas they can bring back to their own communities to strengthen connection, reduce stigma, and support youth mental health.
Breakout Sessions
Breakout Session
Building Connection: A Playful Drawing Workshop
Children’s Book Author-Illustrator
Connection makes a profound difference in mental health, but how do we create it? In this interactive workshop, participants will discover how simple, playful drawing activities can strengthen communication, build resilience, and nurture meaningful connection among people of all ages.
Through hands-on activities, attendees will explore strategies that encourage imagination, increase focus, and create inclusive environments where everyone feels seen and heard.
Participants will leave with resources for creating a screen-free drawing practice they can use personally or professionally to build joyful connections with others.
Breakout Session
Let’s Talk: Parenting, Mental Health & Resources
Kiersten’s Ride
Open conversations about mental health can reduce stigma, strengthen relationships, and encourage people to seek support when they need it. Parenting also plays an important role in helping children develop resilience, confidence, and coping skills.
Join us for an open conversation about parenting, mental health, resilience, and the resources available to help families find the support they need.
Breakout Session
Building Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems: Best Practices for Sustainable Student Support
Michigan Department of Education
Children and youth thrive when schools, families, behavioral health providers, and community partners work together. This session will highlight Michigan’s efforts to develop and sustain Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems through cross-sector partnerships, workforce development, innovative funding strategies, and data-informed decision-making.
Participants will learn practical approaches for assessing current systems, identifying priorities, building collaborative teams, and implementing multi-tiered supports that promote mental health and well-being for all students.
Attendees will leave with promising practices, resources, and actionable strategies they can adapt to strengthen school mental health systems in their own communities.
Breakout Session
From Lived Experience to Systems Change: Building Adoption & Permanency Competency in Michigan
The National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services
Children, youth, and families involved in foster care, adoption, guardianship, and kinship care often face mental health challenges connected to trauma, loss, separation, attachment, and permanency.
This session will explore Michigan’s statewide efforts to strengthen adoption- and permanency-competent mental health supports by bringing together child welfare, behavioral health, education, tribal communities, caregivers, youth, and people with lived experience.
Participants will learn how lived expertise can help identify barriers, shape better systems, and create sustainable solutions that improve access to care.
Breakout Session
Putting Your Own Oxygen Mask on First: Nurturing Yourself and Building Resilience Mid Flight!
When your child is facing challenges, it is easy to pour all of your energy into caring for them. But who is caring for the caregiver? This interactive session is designed for parents navigating the realities of raising a child with additional physical and/or mental health needs.
Explore practical strategies for managing caregiver stress, parental guilt, burnout, and resilience in ways that actually fit your life.
Come connect with a community that understands and give yourself permission to refuel.
Breakout Session
From Receiving Support to Leading Change: The Transformative Power of Lived Experience
AbsoluteCare
What if the young person receiving services today became tomorrow’s leader, advocate, and decision-maker? Cheye Weston shares her journey from receiving services through ASK Family Services to returning as a Youth Peer Support Specialist and ultimately serving on the Board of Directors for the Association for Children’s Mental Health.
Through storytelling and reflection, this session explores how lived experience can become a source of strength, authentic connection, hope, and systems change.
Participants will be challenged to rethink how they view the people they serve and consider how organizations can intentionally create opportunities for youth and families to move from receiving support to leading change.
Meet Our Exhibitors
Family Center
The Family Center is a statewide parent-directed resource and support center for families of children with special health care needs.
Giving Paws
Giving Paws connects communities with trained support dogs and support programming while promoting best practices in the care of support animals.
Adoptive Family Support Network
The Adoptive Family Support Network (AFSN) provides support and resources to adoptive families across Michigan, helping families navigate challenges, strengthen connections, and create lasting, supportive homes for children who have experienced foster care.
PAC/YAC
Learn more about ACMH’s youth and parent leadership opportunities and connect with the people helping shape our work.
Cedar Creek
Cedar Creek Hospital provides evidence-based, trauma-informed behavioral health treatment for adolescents and adults. Their individualized care focuses on mental health support, patient-centered planning, and practical skills for building wellness and resilience.
The National Center for Adoption Competent Mental Health Services
The National Center works to strengthen adoption and permanency competency in mental health systems and improve access to responsive services.
Michigan Organization on Adolescent Sexual Health
MOASH mobilizes youth voices, engages community partners, and informs decision-makers to advance sexual health, identities, and rights.
End Violent Encounters Inc. (EVE)
EVE provides free and confidential support to survivors of domestic violence, sexual violence, stalking, and abuse later in life.
Charlie Health
Charlie Health provides virtual intensive outpatient mental health treatment for children, teens, and adults.
Mindwell Therapy
Mindwell Therapy provides support for teens, young adults, and student athletes experiencing anxiety, school stress, depression, and sports-related anxiety.
Allison Romens Author & Illustrator
Allison Romens creates books that help children and families understand big feelings, trauma, mental health, and brain development through storytelling and illustration.
Grand Canyon University
Explore mental health and counseling education pathways and scholarship opportunities.
Henry Ford Behavioral Health Hospital
Henry Ford Behavioral Health Hospital provides inpatient behavioral health services for individuals age 12 and older experiencing a mental health crisis.
Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan
The Epilepsy Foundation of Michigan provides education, support, advocacy, and resources for people affected by epilepsy and functional seizures.
We Are the Eyes of the World
We look forward to bringing youth, families, caregivers, professionals,
and community partners together for a day of connection and learning.