Celebrating 20 Years of Enriching Lives!
Research-Based, Effective Practice, Great Life Mentoring Celebrates 20 Years of Service to Clark County Children Receiving Publicly Funded Mental Health Services. Clark County Department of Community Services Receives Visionary Excellence Award
Vancouver Washington — Great Life Mentoring (GLM) hosted a 20th Anniversary celebration, sponsored by the Columbia River Mental Health Foundation, at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in early January 2020. The event for mentors, children, partners and financial supporters included lunch with a short program, OMSI exhibits and gifts for participants. The event highlighted an award to the Clark County Department of Community Services (CCDCS) and a video that announced a dozen mentor match videos being released in 2020.
Great Life Mentoring (GLM) is an innovative and replicable intervention that utilizes trained community volunteers as mentors to enhance mental health outcomes for youth from low-resource families. The mentoring model, founded by Elizabeth Higley, through a partnership between the CCDCS and Columbia River Mental Health in 2000, was named an Effective Practice by the United States Department of Justice in 2019. The program is designated as a Research-Based practice on the Washington State Inventory of Evidence-Based Practices.
Higley, the GLM Board and Research Team are working to replicate the intervention that is shown to be associated with a statistically significant increase in global functioning and a lower likelihood of an unplanned and client-initiated ending of treatment. To that end, they are conducting a national partner search in 2020.
Members of the press please contact Elizabeth Higley at greatlifementoring@gmail.com for more information.
