Every child, no matter what school they attend, will soon have a path to care
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — University Schools has received $7.5 million over five years to build a countywide network to give children better access to mental health services, regardless of what school they attend.
Anchored at University Schools’ Wellness Treatment, Training and Research Center, the grant will fund Project Aware, a program to connect children ages 5 to 19 and their families to mental health resources, training and support. Services will be available in the evenings at neighborhood library branches, Kindred Place and through telehealth to help reach working families who can’t access services during school hours.
“For the first time, a family can walk into a library branch on a Tuesday evening, get screened and be connected to a counselor that same week. The idea is to catch kids early and meet them where they are, rather than waiting until they’re in crisis,” said Dr. Angela Hargrave, senior director of Student Services at University Schools. “That is what a true system of care looks like, and that is exactly what this grant is designed to deliver.”
University Schools is the first Innovative School District in Tennessee, and this grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) makes University Schools an anchor of a model that could be replicated across the country.
“We are often asked to scale our model to support more children throughout the county, but limited finances and facilities often hinder our ability to do so” said Dr. Sally Parish, vice provost and superintendent of University Schools. “This grant now allows us to expand our reach, beyond only serving the children in our district”
Through partnerships with Kindred Place, the Interprofessional Community Health Clinic and SMART Center at the University of Memphis, Alliance Healthcare, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis Public Libraries, and the SchoolSeed Foundation, the network will use a three-tiered public health framework that focuses on prevention, early identification and intervention and referral to full clinical services for students with the greatest needs.
“The barriers to mental health care for young people in our community are not a mystery. There are wait times, costs, distance and hours that don’t work for working families,” said Hargrave. “This grant gives us the tools to dismantle those barriers and build a real system: one that moves every child from awareness, to identification, to treatment, without falling through the cracks at any point along the way.”
The SAMHSA grant is now the largest grant or gift made in the 114-year history of University Schools.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Jessica Gertler
jgwbster@memphis.edu
