the Kacie Palm Project
Weaving a Tapestry of Hope
for youth suicide prevention
the Kacie Palm Project is a collaborative program with
the Bristol County Regional Coalition for Suicide Prevention and the Palm family
On May 16, 2016, thirty-one people came together to break bread while discussing how they can light a fire within first, and entire county, then an entire state, and then...the world. The topic? Suicide. More to the point, suicide prevention, early intervention - zero suicide. Nothing else is acceptable.
On the agenda was the introduction to the general public of the Kacie Palm Project, a grassroots, community based early prevention program focused on youth.
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Chairperson, Steven Palm
Project Managers: Annemarie Matulis & Tracey Pacheco Medeiros Mission: The Kacie Palm Project is a about shattering the fear, the silence and the stigma surrounding mental health concerns by showering the community with the HOPE that if we can break the silence, we can save lives. It’s a comprehensive, youth focused, trauma informed, resilience and prevention based approach to raising awareness and education at the grassroots community level. Goals: To connect families who are concerned about their own teens or college aged youth, whether its self-injury, excessive sadness, depression, suicidal thinking or suicide attempts with local resources, education and training as well as the ability to hear directly from families who have lost a child to suicide. To utilize existing evidence based curricula as well as new and innovative programs to educate and train family members and other community adults, as well as teens and college aged youth in suicide prevention. Some programming will also help all concerned to participate in “wellness check” and retreat workshops to support continued recovery and healing. |
That the training is based on known curricula - safeTALK, Breaking Free from Depression, More Than Sad & the peer to peer, How not to Keep a Secret.
That we also plan to incorporate a youth version of our Re-Energize & Re-Connect Wellness Check Workshops for youth as well as a briefer version of the all-day retreat workshop, Is This the Night?, for parents of younger suicide attempt survivors and those who self-injure. We also have a slightly modified version of DBT/stress relief for middle and high schoolers that we have been using at our teen center in Taunton. The goal is to weave this all together over a period of time and it must begin with educating & training parents within local communities. ______________________________________________ Our first step is to engage community organizations, the faith-based community, sports teams, dance studios – any place youth gather in large or small groups, to agree to incorporate the program as part of an ongoing focus of health and wellness. We hope to have our first trainings scheduled for mid-July 2016. Obviously, parents/adults must be trained before we bring programs to teens. To discuss the project, how it can be implemented, etc., please contact Project Manager Annemarie Matulis, [email protected], (508) 922-7278. |