By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A federal grant will help a behavioral health consortium in northwest Missouri find ways to address a growing pediatric mental health crisis.
Director of the St. Francis Foundation Megan Jennings says a foundation has already been laid to address these needs, but this grant will help further that.
One example of what it will benefit is the five-county cooperative mental health board which meets to address mental health needs. Jennings says this grant will provide money towards that
"So, our consortium can work through this great board that already exists from these counties to say we have some startup funds, and we can really begin digging into this deeper," Jennings tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And so, this is really a strategic planning grant."
This grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, Jennings says, is a planning grant to begin finding ways to tackle the issue better.
"But really this planning grant helps in a huge, huge way come together as kind of a consortium and really begin identifying what are the key needs, what are the major gaps in the area, and how do we respond better to this crisis," Jennings explains.
The assessment will examine which populations in the six-county region, consisting of Nodaway, Worth, Andrew, Atchison, Gentry, and Holt, have difficulty accessing mental health services.
Jennings says one area the grant could help address is finding ways to bring more medical providers into Mosaic's system.
"That can help address some of these gaps, I had a call from a school district just a couple of weeks ago that was trying to get a fourth grader in to see a mental health counselor within our system here in Maryville, and they said it's a six week wait time," Jennings says. "And the reality is that looks pretty good for us, we've in the past had a 12 week wait time, and that's reality for a lot of services across the United States."
Jennings says the planning could help them find ways to get students into services sooner along with providing more resources.