JUF expands community mental health funding

In the face of record incidence of mental illness, the Jewish United Fund has allocated an additional $2 million in grants for new and expanded mental health services throughout the community.

The increased funding will support new or enhanced mental health services at eight agencies that will impact thousands of people of all ages and abilities, from preschoolers and their teachers and families to older adults, teens, and parents of children with disabilities.

“The pandemic was a trigger for people struggling with anxiety, depression, and addiction, and mental health is the number one health care need in Chicago’s Jewish community today,” said JUF President Lonnie Nasatir. “The trauma unleashed by the horrific July 4 violence in Highland Park only exacerbated this reality.

“Depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health challenges are all on the rise, and it is a top priority for JUF to help meet this crying need,” Nasatir said.

The enhanced funding comes on the heels of JUF investing over $3 million in additional funds for mental health services and infrastructure at the height of the COVID pandemic. In 2022, these resources enabled JUF agencies to provide 47,000 people with an array of mental health services, including direct care; prevention and intervention programs; and community outreach and education.

“The two-year grants were designed to enable organizations to plan, innovate, and build future capacity,” said Steve Greenbaum, Chair of JUF’s Overall Planning and Allocations Committee. “We sought to make grants where they could have the most far-reaching impact.

“Since the shortage of mental health professionals precludes swiftly providing a year of psychotherapy for every individual in need, in addition to providing direct care some of the programs are preventive or provide early intervention,” Greenbaum said. “We can build resilience and empower community members with education, coaching, respite, and coping tools–and we are piloting programs that are scalable and can easily be adopted by others.”

Seven of the eight funded programs include at least one component that invests in the mental health of the next generation.

The demand for mental health support for children and teens is escalating, as evidenced by JCC mental health professionals providing direct support to an unprecedented 1 in 4 children attending its Chicago area day camps in 2022.

Mental health challenges are particularly acute among very young children, with local early childhood programs reporting that the proportion of preschoolers needing help has more than doubled to 50%-a sobering result of having spent most of their formative years in a pandemic. Studies also show that children growing up in poverty are at especially high risk, twice as likely to develop mental health conditions as their peers.

Another at-risk group is parents of children with disabilities. More than half of local parents caring for children with disabilities reportedly struggle with their mental as well as physical health and are in urgent need of respite.

“Investing in our community means investing in its most vulnerable people,” Greenbaum said. “Right now, one of the things many of these vulnerable people need most is mental health services.”

JUF leadership has repeatedly emphasized the importance of open conversations about mental health.

“People need to know that they are not in this alone,” Nasatir said. “If you or your child is struggling with your mental health, your Jewish community sees you and is here for you.”

Linda S. Haase is JUF’s Senior Associate Vice President of Marketing Communications .

Newly funded projects to enhance community mental health

• To meet growing mental health needs among youth at Jewish summer camp, JUF is enabling JCC Chicago to add social workers at its 10 JCC Apachi Day Camp locations, helping to provide proactive as well as reactive support to 4,500 children, teens, and their families.

• To strengthen the mental health of preschoolers who spent their formative years in the pandemic, JUF is enabling JCFS Chicago’s Virginia Frank Child Development Center and the JUF Early Childhood Collaborative to team up to serve 1,800 preschoolers and their families. Virginia Frank’s clinicians will provide mental health training for teachers at early childhood centers and coach parents in meeting their children’s mental health needs–and their own.

• To address the local spike in mental health issues, JUF is enabling JCFS Chicago to launch a Center for Trauma and Resilience, devoted to preventing people impacted by trauma (like the July 4th shooting) from developing more significant mental health issues-while creating clinical capacity to care for those who do. It will serve 300 people its first year, including direct services for individuals; psychological first aid training for professionals and lay leaders, programming to build synagogues’ capacity as resilience hubs; and community-based resilience education for teens.

• To make mental health services more accessible for low-income Jewish families in Chicago’s day school community, JUF is enabling REACH and The Ark to team up to provide mental health services to 150 more children and families. A new Ark clinician will work on-site at local Jewish day schools lacking their own social workers to expand access to mental health treatment, while providing wraparound social services for their families.

• To reduce behavioral problems than often accompany mental health issues in children, JUF is enabling REACH to equip local Jewish day school parents, grandparents, and teachers with tools to prevent or manage challenging behavior and to reduce their own stress. Parental training in Collaborative Problem Solving will be expanded, a coaching component will be added, and training in social-emotional learning will be extended to teachers of young children.

• To improve mental health for parents of children with disabilities, JUF is enabling Libenu to grow its respite services for caregivers to serve 150 families per year. Libenu will expand its after-school Lev Respite program, bringing in some 37% more families with children ages of 4-7 who had been waitlisted. A second weekly respite session will be added for families of children ages 8-15.

• To increase mental health services for older adults facing a shortage of psychologists and psychiatrists, JUF is enabling CJE SeniorLife to serve 700 more older adults. CJE will expand short-term group therapy and telehealth support groups; create an online Mental Health Toolkit; and launch initiatives to build future capacity, recruiting, and developing more social workers with expertise in geriatrics and exploring new options for offering telepsychiatry.

• To meet a variety of mental health needs, JUF is enabling Mishkan to add multi-faceted mental health programming for nearly 1,000 community members. Mishkan will increase the number of people served at Maggie’s Place, its mental health/wellness center; expand and enhance a program that creates small supportive cohorts of new parents and add a cohort for expectant parents; add aides to help children with mental health/behavioral needs remain in the classroom at Mensch Academy, its after-school learning program; and launch a new marketing campaign to decrease stigma and increase awareness of mental health resources.