"Healed People Heal People..."
Our Mental Health theme has revealed the scope and scale of mental health conditions in our country, the factors in our society contributing to poor mental health, and the challenges that have resulted in a broken system of care. At Organization Night, we turned to the solutions. From early support for children and families to healing trauma and ending stigma, our 12 finalist organizations showed us the solutions that are working to heal people and create better mental health for all.
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
Early Start
The UCSF Child Trauma Research Program starts upstream by working with pregnant women and children ages 0-5 years old. Exposure to trauma in this period is particularly damaging for children's mental health and brain development long term. That's why Dr. Alicia Lieberman and her team developed a family-child therapy methodology that takes families from a place of danger and fear to safety, trust and hope. Battery Powered support would allow them to train thousands more clinicians in their methodology using web-based training.
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
Families First
Safe & Sound is a family resource center in San Francisco that focuses on preventing child abuse, the single biggest contributor to mental illness according to CEO, Katie Albright. The center offers wraparound services that build the protective factors families need to prevent abuse and thrive. Serving more than 1000 families per year, Safe & Sound's free services have strong evidence of impact and recognition as one of nine best primary abuse prevention practices in the country by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
Homeless Children's Network. Black families in crisis in San Francisco are not getting the care they need. Models of support have not served these families well and as a result many refuse to access mental health services despite a clear need for support. The solution? Black therapists offering Africentric therapy to black families. And that's exactly what Dr. April Silas proposed with the Ma'at Program, which will reach 500 young people and their families with culturally appropriate therapy in the community.
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
School Support
Children, disproportionately black children, are being expelled from preschool. Exclusionary disciplinary methods set these children on a destructive path that often leads to incarceration, and at great financial cost to society. Seneca Family of Agencies developed the model of unconditional education to stop this cycle and to deliver on the promise of that every student - regardless of zip code, (dis)ability, race, or history of trauma - is supported to learn within an inclusive school environment. Robin Detterman laid out how Seneca works with educators in schools to embed practices and mental health practitioners within schools to help all students thrive. Battery Powered funding would support their model in four Oakland schools, reaching 1300 students.
Children's Health Council has a long history of supporting students in East Palo Alto and east Menlo Park. Their Ravenswood Wellness Partnership brings together 12 providers to meet the mental health needs of all youth in these communities in a coordinated manner. As Manisha Agrawal said, their superpower is being deeply embedded in the community and lifting up solutions from the community.
End Stigma
Student Hannah Deng shared her moving story of how she attempted suicide in 2017. Feeling completely alone, she had no idea that so many others were struggling as well. Her high school started a Bring Change to Mind chapter to create a campus that is inclusive and empathetic to all that have been touched by mental illness. By teens, for teens, Bring Change to Mind is seeking Battery Powered funding to support 100 clubs in high schools across the Bay Area.
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
At Risk Populations
Dr. Tia Dole of The Trevor Project shared how LGBTQ youth are more than four times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. That's why the Trevor Project is focused on providing suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ young people. Battery Powered support would scale their digital crisis services to reach more than 60,000 young people per year over chat and text.
A Home Within provides foster youth in the Bay Area with high-quality psychotherapy and a healing relationship for free, for as long as it takes. Anthony Pico was a beneificiary of their support and shared his story of being in foster care from birth, multiple placements, abuse and trauma. "There is no P in PTSD," he shared, "the trauma keeps traveling with you." But with support from A Home Within, he went from just barely surviving to thriving thanks to support from his therapist.
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
Innovations in Care
The Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care was founded to bring recovery-based care to every community. Gina Nikkel shared how Battery Powered support would help scale two models that have been proven highly effective in Europe but which are nascent in the United States. The Hearing Voices Network provides therapy to people who hear voices and helps them cope with trauma and live successful lives with their voices. The Open Dialogue project supports young people with early psychosis to grapple with psychosis and get one's life back on track without the stigma of a psychiatric diagnosis and a lifetime on medication.
Divert Incarceration
When parents are jailed, children suffer. The trauma of losing a primary caregiver to incarceration has long lasting effects on children's stability and mental health #cut50, a program of Dream Corps recently scored a legislative win in California with a new policy that allows diversion from incarceration for primary caregivers facing non violent charges. Instead of a cell, these people will receive the mental health and substance abuse treatment they need. Michael Mendoza shared how Battery Powered support will help them ensure effective implementation of this new policy.
Eldra Jackson III has spent more of his life behind bars than not. With deep trauma festering inside him, he was not "the kind of person you would want as your neighbor," he said. While incarcerated, he got support from Inside Circle which offers peer facilitated healing circles to address trauma, and now Eldra is the Co-Executive Director of the organization. "Hurt people, hurt people, and healed people heal people," he shared. Eldra also noted that 85% of people who are locked up today will be back in the community at some point. "Do you want them to come back hurt, or healed?" he asked
Photo credit: Joe Keefe
A young man named Travis served 18 months behind bars, including in solitary confinement, for stealing a can of ravioli. Travis was suffering from schizophrenia, and what Travis really needed was "a bed instead" according to John Snook, Executive Director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. Our support will help them expand their aBedInstead campaign to educate the community, law enforcement, consumers and policymakers on how our mental health system incentivizes the incarceration of people with serious mental illness and what can be done to help solve this crisis. With a track record of changing laws in 35 states across the country, they are well positioned to make continued legislative progress.
On March 10th, the Battery Powered community will gather to decide which of these finalists to fund. Want to be part of deciding where more than $1 million will be allocated? Join Battery Powered today.
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Battery Powered is The Battery's giving program. To learn more or get involved, visit thebatterysf.com/batterypowered or contact [email protected]