BHN’s Linda Blouin-Roy Receives Award for Children’s Behavioral Health

SPRINGFIELD — Behavioral Health Network Inc. (BHN) announced that Linda Blouin-Roy, who serves as the program director for BHN’s Family Support and Training/Family Partners Program, is the recipient of the Assoc. for Behavioral Healthcare’s (ABH) Salute to Excellence – Carl B. Cutchins Award for Children’s Behavioral Health. Blouin-Roy accepted her award on Oct. 21 at ABH’s annual Salute to Excellence event in Framingham.

The Carl B. Cutchins Award for Children’s Behavioral Health recognizes an active child advocate who has demonstrated a long-term commitment to supporting and enhancing services for children and/or adolescents with behavioral-health needs at the state or local level.

ABH’s Salute to Excellence is a celebratory event that recognizes individuals and groups, often clinical and direct-care staff, who have made outstanding contributions to community-based behavioral healthcare in Massachusetts.

In Blouin-Roy’s nomination for the award, she was credited with having cultivated BHN’s Family Support and Training program over the past 20 years into a robust, well-respected, and invaluable program that has served and benefited innumerable families in Massachusetts. Through the program, those with lived experience raising a child in the behavioral-health system are connected to families receiving Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative services.

Blouin-Roy has worked at both BHN and at the state level to develop professional and ethical standards and trainings for Family Partners program leaders. She is respected at the local and statewide levels for her experience and expertise.

According to Michelle Michaelian, senior vice president at BHN, “Linda is a natural at this work. She has been an excellent teacher, role model, and leader who is well-respected by her peers, managers, staff, and the families with whom she works. Having raised her own children with special needs, she has been an advocate for countless children and families by supporting, educating, and guiding them. Linda’s persistence proved that having Family Partners involved in treatment was invaluable in helping families move forward.

“Linda has built the Family Support and Training program from the ground up,” Michaelian went on. “With that experience, she has been able to provide support for developing Family Partner programs across other BHN service areas, including the Family Resource Center, Mobile Crisis Intervention, Community Based Acute Treatment, Intensive Home-based Therapeutic Care, and with the Department of Mental Health In-Home Therapy program. Her efforts have reached far and wide and will continue to reverberate for years to come.”