Prairie View will continue to enhance its mental health-care offerings through a $75,000 grant given by the Sunflower Foundation.
The grant will provide two additional parent support specialists.
Prairie View’s parent support specialists provide families with home-based parental support.
“It is more cost effective and certainly more beneficial for families to receive this type of mental-health support than to have a child placed in residential treatment,” said Denise Rhoades, grant writer.
Before the grant, Prairie View’s parent support specialists were spread thin, finding it difficult to meet the growing needs among families that are without some form of waiver.
With two more specialists, Prairie View anticipates a larger group of families will be reached.
Specialists assist families that are hit with pressing issues as well as treatments.
“We have so many parents who don’t have reliable transportation or they don’t have gas for the car or their car insurance has lapsed,” said Teresa Adkins, a Prairie View parent support specialist, whose job enables parents with skills to cope and additional ways to ensure a secure living environment.
The Sunflower Foundation grant will help Prairie View offer social and counseling services as well as family/child welfare, most likely in low-income and uninsured families.
Staff salary, benefits, indirect expenses, consultation fees, training, technology and transportation costs also are among the needs met for the parent support specialists to perform their job effectively, thus allowing the opportunity to branch out to a bigger population.
