Our vision is for Connecticut's youth and families to be addiction-free, healthy members of strong families and communities. Working together, we can make youth guided, family-centered recovery a reality in Connecticut.

Our mission is to help youth and families facing drug and alcohol problems connect with prevention, treatment and recovery services through a statewide network of peer-to-peer supports. We are a unified voice of people who have "been there" working together to strengthen families and communities, improve policies and practices, and, above all, save lives.

Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families works for an effective, accessible system of alcohol and other drug abuse prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery system of services for Connecticut youth and families.

We work with other nonprofit organizations and welcome collaboration with public and private partners to provide these three programs:

1. Advocacy to Increase Access: CTYF organizes and works to unify the advocacy efforts of youth and families as a peer recovery community. We provide public education to prevent addictions and disseminate information for removing barriers and increasing access to recovery. We work to give voice to our youth and families at the policy-making tables by promoting involvement and making connections.



2. Peer-to-Peer Recovery Support: CTYF provides training, supervision and opportunities for youth and families to support and help others to prevent alcohol and drug addiction, and initiate and sustain recovery. We offer support via social networking tools on-line, by telephone, and in one-on-one settings.



3. Building Community Peer-to-Peer Support Services: By organizing connections "town-by-town," we provide training events and consultation to help initiate the process that gets key community leaders involved in growing local peer-to-peer recovery support services for youth and families. CTYF brings together grassroots programs, educators, business leaders, parents, families and concerned youth to develop the tools needed for creating and sustaining peer-to-peer addiction recovery activities. CTYF provides technical assistance so that every Connecticut community can become linked with other prevention, treatment and peer-to-peer recovery resources statewide. We also help to build on existing community strengths and capacities. Many successful and innovative promising practices and programs have been quietly working alone helping Connecticut youth and families. CTYF seeks to raise visibility for these "best kept secrets" for supporting youth and family recovery. Our chats, forums, blogs, training, technical assistance and events help build relationships and sustain a statewide network of youth and family recovery support.

• We are a statewide non-profit organization with a board of directors of youth and families, a technical advisory group, youth and family co-directors, staff and many volunteers.
• Working together on the issues as equal partners, Connecticut youth and families in recovery unite whole families, communities, elected leaders and citizens building peer-to-peer prevention and recovery support services to supplement the current treatment system.
• Everything we do is recovery-driven and developed by youth and families.
• We cultivate the potential of young people and families already in sustained recovery.
• We unite diverse segments of youth and family grass-root advocacy efforts across the state to present a unified voice, message and mission.
• We offer training and technical help to communities that want to build peer-to-peer supports.
• Because the problems with drugs and alcohol have no lines, our recovery solutions are not compartmentalized. We work across age classifications and the spectrum of the established prevention, treatment and recovery systems. The health and well-being of thousands of youth and families is affected by adolescent alcohol and drug problems, but the issue is often overlooked, under-identified or just plain misunderstood. The voice of families is largely absent from the system. It's time for a change. In Connecticut, 16,000 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 need treatment for illicit drug use but do not receive it. And 18,000 adolescents in Connecticut who need treatment for alcohol use don't get it either. Families that get services for a youth with substance use problems find that treatment plans are usually designed for adults and almost always exclude families. Youth and young adults who have experienced behavioral health challenges often experience stigma accessing help and have trouble linking with peer support.

Youth and family involvement is needed to effectively change Connecticut's prevention, treatment and recovery programs. Connecticut's system must do a better job of caring for youth and their families affected by alcohol and other drugs. The price of ignoring this issue is too high; the lives of Connecticut's youth are at stake.

Connecticut Turning to Youth and Families asks for legislators and policymakers help to ensure that effective, accessible services, policies and funding exist for Connecticut's youth and families with alcohol and other drug problems.

With a broad-based stakeholder workgroup, together we can:

• Determine what adolescent alcohol and other drug abuse treatment services are available now and how they are accessed.
• Map spending across state agencies for adolescent alcohol and other drug abuse prevention, treatment and recovery support services.
• Determine if the substance abuse services the state is funding actually work.
• Create effective partnerships among professionals, families and youth to enhance and impact outcomes.
• Propose updates to state regulations on adolescent substance abuse treatment, which have not been revised since 1994.
• Increase availability and use of data in policymaking and budgeting decisions.
• Influence the procurement of prevention, treatment and recovery services across state agencies.
• Promote and advocate for better, enhanced outcomes, best practice trends, evidence-based practice and performance contracting to increase federal and private financial funding.
• Launch more strategies for youth-to-youth and family-to-family mentoring and recovery support.
• Help Connecticut shift its beliefs and culture relating to young people, families and people in recovery being actively involved, trained and funded so they can drive remove barriers to equal inclusion.
• Foster the growth of peer-to-peer recovery support services.