The RIP Racially/Ethnically/Culturally Diverse Family
(RECDF) Involvement Project

In March 2004, the RIP Nashville headquarters (Children and Youth Program, Middle Tennessee Mental Health Institute) and the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities (TDMHDD), Office of Special Populations and Minority Services, initiated this new project with special emphasis on reaching out to an increasingly diverse community within Davidson County, Tennessee.

The goals of the RECDF project are:
* To identify key stakeholders and organizations within the local African American and Spanish-speaking communities;
* To inform these persons and organizations about early intervention mental health services for preschoolers and their families at RIP;
* To ensure that RIP staff receive appropriate training in sensitivity to cultural competency issues for the growing minority populations in Nashville, Tennessee;
* To provide a rich and diverse variety of book and video titles for parents and children with appropriate role models --- e.g., familiar faces of other races, ethnic backgrounds, and cultures;
* To provide RIP training materials in Spanish text, and;
* To make necessary internal, programmatic adaptations to accommodate and maximize the RIP treatment experience for client families of diverse races, ethnic backgrounds, and cultures.

Focus groups have been held with RIP Nashville clients of African American descent to solicit comments concerning their RIP treatment experience. Similar meetings will be held with Spanish-speaking RIP clients.

RIP Nashville has already taken significant steps to improve services to diverse families. Specifically:
* Providing a bilingual (Spanish/English) parent case manager staff member who graduated from the RIP Nashville program with her own children, a bilingual classroom coordinator for the evening program, and a bilingual consulting clinical psychologist;
* Providing interpreters for enrolled families as an integral part of their treatment;
* Continuing to build a respectable lending library of multicultural books and videos geared to both adult and child audiences (many in Spanish text);
* Adding an En Español page to the RIP website;
* Participating in multicultural community events;
* Learning about services within Davidson County specifically for minority populations;
* Conducting a series of cultural competency training sessions with RIP staff members, and;
* Continuing to identify additional areas needing improvement.

For additional information, please contact Kate Kanies, RIP Nashville Coordinator, at 615-963-1177 or Alysia Williams, RECDF Coordinator, at 615-741-3290.