November 8, 2024
For immediate releaseMedia contact: Cara Scarola Hansen
Center for Child Counseling Public Relations Counsel
cara@yourmissionmarketing.com
HONA Honors Innovative Approach to Fighting Youth Mental Health Crisis
Center for Child Counseling Receives Hats Off Nonprofit Innovation Award
Center for Child Counseling (CFCC) announces its selection as the 2024 Hats Off Nonprofit Innovation Award honoree. The Center received this recognition at the 8th Annual Hats Off Nonprofits Awards, hosted by Nonprofits First on October 30.
The Innovation Award recognizes an individual or an organization that has demonstrated a creative or non-traditional approach to solving a community challenge. This year’s award highlighted CFCC’s innovation in creating a Data Dashboard to confront the youth mental health crisis that our community is facing and to strengthen the agency’s ability to serve children and families in Palm Beach County.
The data is alarming: 1 in 4 children in Florida is experiencing a mental health or behavioral concern. In 2021, 41.5% of Palm Beach County high school students reported that they felt hopeless, and 20.7% of total high school students seriously contemplated suicide. At the same time, it is estimated that 75-80% of children in need of mental health services do not receive them. Research has shown that unaddressed mental health problems among children can lead to lower educational achievement, greater involvement with the criminal justice system, and poor health and social outcomes overall.
According to CEO Renée Layman, “No child in crisis belongs on a waitlist. Prior to implementing the Data Dashboard, we had 865 kids on the waitlist. Within two weeks, the waitlist dropped dramatically to 350 kids.”
Beginning in 2019, CFCC partnered with WebAuthor to map out a Data Dashboard to directly fight the youth mental health crisis.
The Data Dashboard takes the Center’s public health approach–tiers of prevention, early intervention, and treatment–to inform decisions and increase services and decrease wait times to serve more kids and families. Through a data-driven, centralized intake, each family is screened to pick up on mental health and behavioral concerns, as well as financial, housing, and hunger concerns. The data collected allows CFCC to create services that are responsive to caregiver needs without a formalized diagnosis. Through the Data Dashboard, those with the highest needs can be triaged directly to treatment, rather than waiting on a list for care.
Populated with data from the 7,000 children CFCC serves each year, the system shows exactly where they are located within the county with the various issues they are facing. This geomapping is driving the agency’s vision to better serve kids and families in our community.
Within the Data Dashboard, the CFCC team is looking at data in real time and using the information to pinpoint emerging trends in the specific areas addressed by mental health consultation. Presently, the dashboard highlights concerns such as behavioral issues, family conflict, and anxiety as the most common.
CFCC has taken the prevention science and brought it to practice, with a model that focuses on building supports to prevent mental health crises. Every child and family in Palm Beach County has access to an array of resources and supports that focus on making sure all adults have the skills and knowledge to effectively address the impact of adverse childhood experiences and promote child resilience, safety, well-being. As a universal strategy, CFCC creates tip sheets, support groups, and training based on family and community voice and need.
“Our need to act has never been greater. Being able to design services based on the need rather than guessing what the need may be is so powerful. We are incredibly grateful to Nonprofits First for recognizing Center for Child Counseling’s innovation in taking action through data to help solve the youth mental health problem,” stated Layman.
In addition to receiving the 2024 Innovation Award, CFCC has been the past honoree of four other HONA awards, including: 2017 Nonprofit Executive of the Year/Renée Layman, 2018 Nonprofit of the Year (Medium), 2019 Nonprofit Professional of the Year/Lauren Scirrotto, and 2020 People’s Choice Award.
For the full list of 2024 HONA nominees and honorees, visit: nonprofitsfirst.org/hats-off-awards.
For more information on CFCC, to access resources, or to make a referral, visit: centerforchildcounseling.org.
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