Health board awards grants
GOSHEN — The county health department has awarded $300,000 in pass-through grants to community organizations.
Under the Health First Indiana program, local departments must pass on to other organizations a share of the millions of dollars in extra funding they are receiving under a new formula. Elkhart County allotted $300,000 to award in one-year grants this year, and the Elkhart County Board of Health voted on how to distribute the money at its April meeting.
The grants are directed to three areas marked as priorities for the county: Maternal and infant health, mental health and sexually transmitted infections. The health department designated $120,000 each to the first two categories and $60,000 to STI prevention and treatment.
Health Administrator Andrew Bylsma said the committee that scored the applications was looking for the most effective proposals.
“It was really important to the department and the committee to make sure that we were addressing real needs, that we weren’t funding programs that weren’t going to help,” he said.
Based on the committee’s recommendations, the board voted to fully fund a joint application from the Cora Dale House and Lexington House, two mental health support communities in Elkhart County. Their proposal includes a new position and program building to add capacity for day programs that engage adults with serious persistent mental illness.
The proposed budget would fund staffing and training and would be split evenly between the two organizations. They were awarded $60,000 worth of mental health funding plus $60,000 in STI prevention funds.
The board voted to partially fund a proposal from Oaklawn Psychiatric Center, which proposed increasing staffing levels for crisis response and stabilization services. The $120,000 request also included training clinicians in Brief Strategic Family Therapy, to work with youth to help restructure problematic family interactions.
The health board voted to give Oaklawn $20,000 in mental health funding and $4,000 from maternal and infant health based on the committee’s recommendation to fund a pilot run of the BSFT program and consider expanding next year.
Child and Parent Services will receive $26,000 out of maternal and infant health, after the board voted to fully fund its proposal to partner with the Shaw Center for Children and Families to develop a suicide prevention program. The program would use home visits and crisis staff during all interactions with clients.
Funds will largely go toward contracts for research and development with the Shaw Center, according to the request.
Two proposals from Maple City Health Care Center were fully funded, at $50,000 from maternal health for one and $80,000 for the other, split between mental and maternal health.
The first proposal is to increase the capacity and impact of the Centering Pregnancy groups offered in the county. The program is a heavily researched and well-regarded group-based model of prenatal care that incorporates pregnancy, parenting and childbirth education into provider-lead group sessions, according to the proposal.
The second proposal is to launch an addictions recovery program for individuals in the community who are unable to receive services elsewhere due to income, language barriers or insurance status. The proposal notes that a 16-week intensive outpatient therapy model called the Matrix Model would be used.
