Several local nonprofits have received grants from the Vermont Community Foundation (VCF) to expand Vermonters' access to mental health and suicide prevention care as part of its newest recovery initiative from its VT COVID-19 Response Fund.
According to a news release, VCF is distributing $150,000 in grants for this initiative.
Since it was created in March 2020, the VT COVID-19 Response Fund has distributed more than $10 million “to assist with basic and urgent needs for Vermont's most vulnerable, and jump-starting longer-term recovery and resilience through the initial five recovery initiatives announced in September 2020.”
“The approaching holiday season should be a time of joy and reunion, yet too many Vermonters - particularly our youngest neighbors - are struggling with the stress, anxiety, and isolation stemming from the last 20 months of pandemic,” says Dan Smith, the foundation's president and CEO of the Vermont Community Foundation.
Smith said the COVID-19 recovery initiatives were designed “to support solutions to major challenges that must be addressed for Vermont to improve its resilience in the face of future disruption. As we continue to hear stories of Vermonters in crisis, we moved quickly to include support for mental health and suicide prevention as a sixth recovery initiative.”
Grant recipients for this round are community-based organizations that are using evidence-based, culturally competent mental health and suicide prevention supports and services to serve populations put most at risk during the pandemic.
Data has shown that demand for services has skyrocketed over the last 20 months. For example, visits to hospital emergency departments for mental health–related issues among youth were 66 percent higher in May 2020 than during the same month of the previous year.
VCF says this competitive grant round “was designed to enhance community capacity to address risk factors and facilitate access to care, adopt best practices in primary and mental health care facilities, and to provide multi-lingual and multi-modal communications to reduce stigma in Vermont.”
“The situations in Vermont's communities, health care facilities, and designated mental health support systems are dire,” says Sarah Waring, VCF's vice president for grants and community investments. “We are fortunate to have partners that support our work on mental health and suicide prevention at this time, because COVID-19 has shown many of the underlying challenges and the gaps in workforce, system support, facility space, and training, which must be addressed to meet this new demand.”
Local recipients include:
• Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro, which received $10,000 to expand its PRISM program's LGTBQ+ support group that meets weekly to help foster a shared understanding of gender and sexuality in a safe space with peers and allies.
• Out in the Open (formerly Green Mountain Crossroads), which received $10,000 to support expansion of its evidence-based peer support Trans Femme Chill Club for rural trans women and femmes.
• Youth Services, which received $10,000 to support Friends For Change (FFC), a democratically run, youth-led/adult guided, trauma-transformative, and play-based approach to help youth reframe their responses to traumas as strengths.
Moving forward, VCF says it will be continuing to work with donors and partners to explore other strategies for getting resources to organizations supporting mental health and suicide prevention.
To learn more, contact Jane Kimble at jkimble@vermontcf.org or 802-388-3355, ext. 286.