Community Investments > Vulnerable Populations
Vulnerable Populations
The St. Louis Mental Health Board has identified two groups of city residents as priorities within our Vulnerable Populations sector; foreign born residents and individuals with substance abuse issues who are at-risk for HIV/AIDS. The Mental Health Board administers third party and Federal grants, as well as allocates a portion of the Community Mental Health Fund toward these efforts.
Projects Addressing the Needs of Foreign Born City Residents
In the Fall of 2000, MHB and St. Louis Public Schools began a cooperative partnership on the Federal Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative to create a safer school environment. Working with the school system, mental health counselors contracted by the Mental Health Board served as resource people in the areas of conflict resolution and anger management, provided crisis intervention and made appropriate referrals, as needed.
Through this process it became acutely evident that there were many unmet needs for mental health services in the immigrant and refugee communities of St. Louis. Many foreign born persons and their children were suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and other emotional impediments to optimal functioning as a result of war trauma, relocating to another culture, and/or politically motivated torture.
The concept of an integrated network of specialized agencies with the cultural competence or specialized skills to provide mental health services was ‘born’. The goal was to transform a disconnected, uncoordinated set of services into a compassionate, culturally competent collaboration for the improvement of emotional and mental health. This initiative came to be known as CANA (Care Access for New Americans). In the spring of 2005, MHB funded the care coordination and outreach efforts out of Community Mental Health Funds to get things started. Almost concurrent with these efforts, MHB was awarded a grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health for funding an array of mental health and support services.
MHB developed a framework for funding for torture survivors and successfully obtained Federal funds. Services for survivors of torture and war trauma began in 2005. Agencies with specialized expertise in the areas of mental health and legal/citizenship related issues were contracted to provide the services. Both the torture survivor project and the MHF/CANA projects utilize the centralized outreach and screening and referral components of the CANA system of care.
At the end of Year 2, in May 2007, MHB was performing above expectations across all goals in the Missouri Foundation for Health Grant.
At the conclusion of Year 1 of the Survivors Project, in September 2007, MHB was meeting expectations across the goals for the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) grant.
To learn more about project service providers, click here.
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Mental Health Treatment for Persons At-Risk of HIV/AIDS
Historically, the Mental Health Board has focused on two primary areas within Mental Health needs; treatment for persons experiencing mental illness diagnoses and substance abuse treatment and prevention. In 2002, in our on-going efforts to bring funding resources to St. Louis, MHB applied for and was awarded a 5-year Federal grant through the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), a center within SAMHSA (Substance Abuse/Mental Health Services Administration) with the goal of expanding and enhancing substance abuse treatment services for persons at-risk for HIV/AIDS
The primary goals for this project are to:
1) Enhance existing services by instituting an outreach initiative that will seek to indentify and refer individuals living in the City of St. Louis at risk for both substance abuse and HIV/AIDS.
2) Enhance existing services by implementing a coordinated system of Pre-Treatment Services
3) Expand existing services by making available best-practice substance abuse treatment and support services within a coordinated system of pre-treatment services.
At the end of Year 4, in September 2007, the Mental Health Board performed above expectations across all goals.
To learn more about project service providers, click here.