A Roadmap to​ Well-Being for Every Child, Youth, and Young Adult

Two images side by side: Left shows a smiling boy in a wheelchair petting a service dog outdoors; right shows a woman with a hearing aid, sitting indoors, appearing engaged.

The Washington Thriving Strategic Plan

A statewide strategy—co-created by young people, caregivers, families, providers, community leaders, and government partners—to improve behavioral health for people before birth to age 25

The Need

A stylized purple icon of an pregnancy ultrasound

Only 37% of young people

needing substance use services receive them

Three outlined silhouettes overlapping, featuring a purple central figure flanked by two green figures, suggesting unity and collaboration

40% of behavioral health workers

in Washington State leave their jobs

Silhouette of a human head in green with a purple brain outline inside, symbolizing mental health awareness

75% of lifetime mental illnesses

emerge by age twenty-four in the U.S.

The Vision

Infographic outlining behavioral health goals for Washington youth, including six guiding principles such as equity, prevention, and support for families, caregivers, and communities.

Our Goals

Healthier young people, healthier families, healthier communities

Focus on what matters

Ensure services, supports, and policies reflect the strengths, desires, and needs of each young person, caregiver, family, and member of the workforce.

Serve Washingtonians equitably

Ensure reach and quality across the state with extra attention and resources directed toward people who face the greatest barriers and disadvantages.

Expand upstream

Build strong wellness foundations, prevention, and early supports while strengthening, not losing, intensive services for young people with the most complex needs.

Strengthen the foundation

Ensure a connected, coordinated, collaborative, informed, adaptive, accountable, values-driven, and sustainable behavioral health ecosystem.

Make help easy to find and get

Deliver coordinated, accessible, effective services and supports across a full continuum of comprehensive offerings, connected to the places where young people, caregivers, and families spend their time.

Three joyful children sit closely together, smiling and laughing

Foundational Dimensions

To realize Washington Thriving’s vision, we need to make progress across three foundational dimensions

A young boy in glasses focuses on his drawing at a classroom table, surrounded by other children engaged in their creative work

Strengthen Infrastructure

Build the governance, data, funding, and workforce

Expand Offerings

Deliver a full, right-time, right-place service continuum of care

Values in Action

Turn core values into daily, people-centered practices

The Longterm Roadmap

Four sequenced phases that build on each other

Establish the foundation for transformation:

  • Leadership and governance
  • System of Care structures
  • Performance measures
  • Integrated information systems
  • Integrated financing
  • Plan to fill gaps

Put what works into practice:

  • System of Care coordinates across state, regional, and local levels
  • Sustainable rates
  • Workforce initiatives
  • Feedback loops
  • Evaluation and learning informs resource allocation

Make what works available to everyone, everywhere:

  • Fully integrated financing
  • Complete service continuum
  • Healthy workforce engine
  • Data-informed decision-making

Keep learning and growing together:

  • Ongoing innovation
  • Evolution in response to changing needs
  • State of the art