Grants Awarded To Fund Mental & Behavioral Health Projects

[Hancock, MI] On December 22, 2017, the Portage Health Foundation (PHF) announced the release of their Mental and Behavioral Health (MBH) RFP with $300,000 available. This amount was made possible through the collaboration with the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation which contributed $50,000 in matching monies for this targeted call for proposal. MBH grants provide financial resources needed to develop new and/or expanded health services which meet a community’s needs.

“This MBH RFP was focused on adolescents because currently there is little to no support for this demographic,” said Kevin Store, executive director of PHF. “Through collaboration, two great programs were funded that will support the MBH needs of our community’s adolescents.”

The two organizations that were awarded in this RFP were the Public Schools of Calumet, Laurium, and Keweenaw (CLK) and Dial Help. These two organizations had projects that specifically addressed the mental and behavioral health needs of the adolescent population. Due to the slight overage in total, the PHF board voted to fund them both in full, totaling $302,411.00 in grant project expenditures.

CLK’s project was to support a trauma-informed school district to better support its student population struggling with mental and behavioral health issues. Their program will support educational training of its staff, additional support for the students
needing mental health support, and education across their school system for its students to better cope.

“We’re proud to support organizations focused on empowering schools with resources that will improve the
access and quality of care available to students in vulnerable communities,” said Audrey Harvey, vice president and CEO of the BCBSM Foundation.

Christopher Davidson, Superintendent for CLK Schools, said, “First, we are so grateful for the Portage Health Foundation’s support of our Trauma Informed School initiative. No student is completely protected from experiencing a situation(s) that may be traumatic for them. It is the goal of this initiative that as a school we can better identify students that have experienced a traumatic event(s) in their life and provide the support they need in and out of the classroom to positively manage the effects of trauma.”

Dial Help’s project was to support a Youth One-Stop Program. At-risk students in the school systems are provided additional support through crisis intervention. They are not only provided immediate support but connect with a Safety Net Program as means of follow-up support.

Rebecca Crane, Executive Director of Dial Help, said, “This program will link youth in school to licensed, clinical crisis intervention, assist youth and families in securing services and navigating treatment provider systems, and provide on-going individual and family support as needed. Our goal is to increase accessibility to mental health and other services, promote early intervention and treatment, as well as provide a number of ongoing supports until those services are established. This funding will allow us to provide crisis intervention in a much more comprehensive and unprecedented way.”

This wrap-around system supports the adolescents in the four-county community needing extra support and mental health intervention services.