Lt. Governor Austin Davis and Allegheny County Legislators Visit Teen Mental Health Collaborative Members to Learn About Innovative Programs
Type: News
Focus Area: Teen Mental Health
Lt. Governor Austin Davis toured The Beacon and discussed the continuum of care with teens and leaders from community-based organizations.
Pennsylvania’s elected leaders are interested in effective and novel models to support young people’s mental health, and the work of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation’s Teen Mental Health Collaborative members offers promising replicable programs. In two separate events during Suicide Prevention Month, leaders from Pennsylvania’s executive and legislative branches spent time in Squirrel Hill speaking with teens and members of the Collaborative about these community-based early interventions and resources for youth.
On Wednesday, September 25, Lt. Governor Austin Davis visited The Beacon, a community space with a focus on uplifting and supporting the well-being and mental health of teens in high school and spoke with teens from the PA Youth Advocacy Network and The Beacon. The teens and leaders from The Beacon took Lt. Gov. Davis on a tour of their facility and then gathered with together with leaders from other community-based organizations committed to teen mental health in Allegheny County to hear about the Shapiro-Davis Administration’s priorities for supporting teen mental health and communities, including $100 million for school-based mental health, $11.5 million to create a statewide Building Opportunity through Out of School Time (BOOST) program, and $45 million investment in the Violence Intervention and Prevention (VIP) program to support proven community-based initiatives to reduce violence.
Karen Feinstein talks to legislators about the Foundation’s commitment to supporting community-based teen mental health services.
Teens and leaders from the community-based organizations expressed the opportunity to strengthen the continuum of care by supporting more programs like The Beacon, building on partnerships between schools and community-based organizations, and working with health systems to further expand these kinds of community-based initiatives.
A day later, on Thursday, September 26, a delegation of Allegheny County Legislators – including Representatives Dan Frankel, Arvind Venkat, and Jessica Benham – visited UpStreet, a teen mental health service managed by JFCS Pittsburgh that offers free counseling to anyone from ages 12-22. The Representatives were welcomed by JHF President and CEO Karen Feinstein, PhD with the backstory on her study tours to Australia and JHF’s work to bring the headspace model here to the United States. This model was embraced by JFCS and The Friendship Circle and resulted in the creation of the two different embodiments of it in UpStreet and The Beacon.
The Representatives were then given a tour of the facility followed by a community discussion with Maggie Doran, an Alderdice high school student who is also a peer mentor with UpStreet, Alliyah Kimbrough, LSW, adolescent and young adult psychotherapist at UpStreet; Alex Gariepy, Sto-Rox School District social worker, Kaitlin Hens-Greco, director of The Beacon, and Jenna Baron, ARYSE executive director.
If you or a loved one are experiencing a behavioral health crisis, call or text 988 to contact the Suicide and Crisis Prevention Lifeline. Additional ways to contact the Lifeline via chat or American Sign Language are also available at www.988lifeline.org.
Read more in this article in The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.
More Photos
Lt. Govenor Austin Davis presents the Shapiro-Davis Administration’s priorities for supporting teen mental health and communities.
Lt. Governor. Davis hears directly from youth during his tour of The Beacon.
JHF Consultant Daniel Rosen, PhD, MSW and Lt. Govenor Austin Davis discuss the innovative programs at community-based organizations in Allegheny County.
UpStreet Peer Mentor Maggie Doran, an Alderdice High School student, discussed her work as a peer mentor.
State Rep. Arvind Venkat discusses teen mental health programming at UpStreet.
State Rep. Dan Frankel takes part in a discussion at UpStreet about teen mental health.