MARYVILLE, Mo. — For the past two years, the St. Francis Foundation, Mosaic Medical Center, Maryville’s fundraising organization, has dedicated its annual fundraising gala to expanding mental health resources.
During the first meeting of the Northwest Missouri Cooperative Mental Health Board last week, MMC-M officials spoke with the board about how they are using the proceeds from those galas and areas for future coordination with the board.
Often one of the biggest challenges in providing mental health care in rural areas is simply recruiting qualified staff.
“Finding a licensed clinical social worker who wants to come live here is simply impossible,” said Megan Jennings, the foundation’s director of development.
To help with that, Jennings said that part of the funds raised at the last two galas helped pay for training a social worker while she earned her clinical hours on the job, a way to attract interested candidates who might not have otherwise. finished in the northwest. Missouri. Jennings said a second social worker joined the program this summer.
Social workers have been essential to another area the foundation and Mosaic have focused on: schools.
“Our schools said they needed more help,” Jennings said. “It took our counselors six to eight weeks to find an appointment.”
Having more of them has certainly helped, as well as getting someone to a school in a timely manner when a student is in crisis.
The organization’s next area of emphasis will be connecting schools with telehealth services.
Often, Jennings said, children who have appointments with mental health professionals have to travel to reach them, either to Maryville from an outlying area or further afield to St. Joseph, Kansas City or elsewhere.
“It’s hard for parents to take kids to their appointments,” she said. “Some just can’t, some may not have transportation, there are so many barriers to care.”
And when children are able to make it to their appointments, Jennings said, it can result in children missing significant time in school on a regular basis and parents leaving work.
Jennings said Mosaic and the foundation intend to provide area school districts with equipment for telehealth appointments (webcams and monitors, for example) that students can go to in a private location on school grounds, which would minimize wasted time.
Part of that program, which is still in its planning stages, will be paid for through grants in partnership with the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
MMC-M President Nate Blackford said the Mosaic Life Care system will benefit from the $2.2 million allocated by UMKC to growing rural mental health programs. The initiative is part of a larger grant from the federal Health Resources and Services Administration to UMKC with the goal of growing the university’s St. Joseph School of Medicine campus. Mosaic partners with UMKC on campus.
As part of the program, UMKC medical students will receive hands-on experience in rural communities like those served by MMC-M. Blackford said the intent is to expose students to rural mental health care to encourage them to work in rural areas after graduation.
The grant will also help pay for a few other services, such as a new van to transport patients, especially children in crisis, from the emergency room to another hospital, and for local school districts to participate in the Strong Character curriculum program, which teaches strategies for mental resilience such as coping with stress.
Blackford also told the mental health board that Mosaic is interested in working closely with the board in the future and offered Mosaic’s resources to work on another grant opportunity for which he said the hospital would not necessarily be the best fit. but the board does. Blackford said that Mosaic would help the board through the grant process at no cost.
Board members voted to seize the opportunity.
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