California-Based Teen Mental Health Leaders Allcove Meet with JHF
Type: News
Focus Area: Teen Mental Health
Pictured is a space at an Allcove center in California.
Steve Adelsheim, MD, director of Stanford’s Center for Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing, returned to JHF on October 3 to share the impact and future directions of Allcove after reading JHF’s ROOTS publication, “Near When it Matters: A Neighborhood Approach to Teen Mental Health."
Allcove spaces are designed by, with, and for youth and are safe spaces where young people ages 12 to 25 can access free clinical mental health and wellness support in their community. The 11 Allcove centers across California bring together the following services: school mental health programs, primary care, employment and education programs, housing and social services, community mental health, and early psychosis programs.
The Central Allcove Team (CaT) serves as the backbone organization to drive model development, implementation, and evaluation and oversee the framework of service delivery. Local Youth Advisory Groups also ensure youth voice leads the Allcove experience and developing solutions to access services. Allcove is also active in an international network of similar centers, including Australia with 186 Headspace centers, British Columbia with 19 Foundry centers, Ontario with 32 YWHO centers, and Ireland with 15 Jigsaw centers.
Steven Adelsheim, MD (at center, in tie) and his daughter Zoe (beside him, to left) describe their work in youth mental health. Ken Thompson, MD (beside Dr. Adelsheim, in blue), a psychiatrist who serves at the Squirrel Hill Health Center, helped to arrange the 2019 event.
In March of 2019, JHF hosted Dr. Adelsheim and his daughter, a homecoming for the Pittsburgh native whose late mother, Marcia, was a geriatric social worker at Jewish Family and Children's Service for more than 20 years. During that presentation the father-daughter duo spoke about the challenges youth face in regard to the strains on high achievement, the resulting high stress, and the increase in suicide deaths among youth in their Silicon Valley community, lauding the impact of teen mental health drop-in spaces.
Allcove's Director, Greg Young, previously served as a consultant to headspace in Australia. Ken Thompson, MD, community psychiatrist at Squirrel Hill Health Center who originally encouraged JHF to visit the headspace centers, and Tushita Mayanil, MD, child and adolescent psychiatrist, also attended the meeting.
JHF will work with these partners to learn from a growing international network of teen safe spaces and assemble information about the cost-savings to support JHF’s and the PA Teen Mental Health Coalition’s goal to secure additional and sustainable funding for teen safe spaces in Pennsylvania.
