Jacqueline Janssen
CA State Policy Director

Jacqueline Janssen is an advocate for families affected by mental illness and a leading voice for collaborative mental health reform. Jacqueline serves on NSSC's Policy Action Committee, and is also our Policy Director for California.

​She is a former Director on the local National Alliance on Mental Illness Board, Commissioner on the County Mental Health Board, and one of the creators of the Family Partnership Policy.

Her fifth book, Every Homeless Person Has a Mother, challenges one of the most overlooked failures in mental health care: the systematic exclusion of families from treatment. Drawing on lived experience, policy insight, and decades of advocacy, the author reveals how clinicians and families can work together. Not blaming each other, but collaboratively, as evidence shows they can: to prevent crisis, reduce suffering, and prevent homelessness. When families are included, outcomes improve.

A UC Berkeley graduate, she is a member of the International Association for Feminist Economics. For decades she placed leaders in organizations for social justice. She travels the globe with her husband, witnessing cultures Americans would consider impoverished, but where homelessness is rare, due to the strength of families.

Learn more at jacquelinejanssen.com and at her Substack: everyhomelesspersonhasamother.substack.com.​