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Endowment for
Health to fund children’s programs
(January
2008 Issue)
By Catherine Robertson Souter
In New Hampshire, access to mental health care for children can
be difficult if not impossible for the consumer to access according
to research done by the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies
(NHCPPS). With less than one child psychiatrist per 10,000 children
overall, N.H. has many counties, especially in the northern tier,
with no psychiatrists offering services for children. While exact
data for other mental health providers, including psychologists,
is not available, experts at NHCPPS estimate that there are nearly
four psychologists per 10,000 residents in the state and more than
10 school psychologists for every 10,000 students.
The New Hampshire Endowment for Health, a privately funded, non-profit
foundation created from the profits of the sale of Blue Cross and
Blue Shield of New Hampshire to Anthem Insurance Companies in 1999,
recently announced a large-scale push to address the unmet mental
health care needs of the state's children.
When it was originally founded, the board of the Endowment for
Health set four objectives that they call "themes." Funding of grants
was to be distributed along these priority lines. The first three
themes were created to address access to health care including:
physical or geographic access, economic barriers to access, and
social/cultural barriers to access. The fourth, a focus on oral
health, will be discontinued as part of the Endowment's newest announced
priority area/theme: a focus on improving the mental health of New
Hampshire's children.
"The foundation made this decision after a year of research with
the NHCPPS," says Kim Firth, Endowment's program director.
The research along with focus groups with families, providers,
school officials and other invested parties showed many gaps in
continuity of care for children and the limited access in many areas
of the state. The Endowment will use the information to make grants
available that address the shortcomings in the current system.
"Families complain about the fragmented system," says Firth. "Many
experience multiple systems that don't talk to one another."
The grants will cover a variety of programs from traditional mental
health treatment to things that support kids' mental health like
after school programs.
The Endowment regularly funds programs, mostly through non-profit
organizations that submit grant requests that fit within its major
themes. The programs that are approved can vary and include anything
from public education to direct services to equipment purchases.
"We are a responsive grant making organization," explains Firth.
"We establish the framework and invite nonprofits to apply for funding
within that framework."
One successful example of the type of program that will be funded
through the new "theme" is the Collaborative for Children and Adolescent
Mental Health, based in Wolfboro. Spearheaded by Donna SanAntonio,
Ed.D., director of the Appalachian Mountain Teen Center and a lecturer
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the program came about
as a result of a tragedy that got the community galvanized to address
the mental health needs of its children and adolescents.
"Seven years ago, there was a teen suicide that generated a real
community response of concern," she says. "The Teen Center held
a series of forum events about suicide and teen depression and we
heard parents' concerns and doctors' concerns. The schools were
saying that they see so much of this. They really are on the front
lines."
In response, the Collaborative was created, using funding from
the Endowment, to bring a child psychiatrist to the area to meet
with medical, school and social services staffs about the care they
were providing to students. The program was so successful that the
local school system chose to continue the funding of the psychiatrist
after the money from the Endowment was depleted. Including this
item in the budget was a major undertaking, SanAntonio says. "The
school districts so rarely include anything extra in a budget but
they saw that it was so needed and so effective."
The Endowment has also gotten involved in the state of New Hampshire's
push to re-write the entire mental health care system, funding the
legislative commission set up to develop a new statewide plan. "There
is a lot of excitement and forward momentum," says Firth. "There
is potential here for a huge system change."
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