Vienna center receives grant for children’s healthcare project
The Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation, ILCHF, recently notified the Family Counseling Center Inc., FCCI, in Vienna of their intent to award a $100,000 grant for the agency’s proposed Southern Illinois Children’s Integrated Healthcare, SICIH, project.
ILCHF is a private foundation which works to address the healthcare needs of children in Illinois. FCCI submitted an application for the grant in June.
FCCI serves the Southern Seven counties of Illinois.
FCCI seeks to integrate mental health care into children’s natural environments through the provision of two full-time clinical staff members to be housed on-site at various locations in its service area.
The locations include Hardin County General Hospital and Clinic in Rosiclare and Vienna High School and Vienna Grade School in Vienna.
Project staff at both sites will work collaboratively with medical and educational staff to reduce access barriers for children and families in the utilization of mental health care, to reduce overall mental health symptoms and to improve personal perception of physical health.
Additionally, the program seeks to provide education and support for non clinical staff in improving mental health literacy and other skills to manage youth with mental/behavioral health needs.
The SICIH project, which is scheduled to begin in January 2017 and span two years, is an “unprecedented opportunity for Family Counseling Center Inc. to break down some of the barriers that has plagued youth services for years, including transportation and the inability to offer instant access to services” says Kerie Moore, the agency’s compliance director, who assisted in writing the grant proposal.
FCCI and its partners in the SICIH project, the Hardin County General Hospital and the Vienna School District, look forward to serving an anticipated 200 youth throughout the two-year program and aim to utilize and publish program outcomes to pursue project sustainability beyond the funding period.
The ILCHF grant award came at a much needed time as FCCI sought to diversify its funding source away from the State of Illinois as a result of the state budget impasse.
FCCI executive director Sherrie L. Crabb states that “private foundation grants like those offered by the Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation will increase in necessity as we move forward without a state budget.”