Hogg Foundation awards $2 million to benefit mental health services for Houston-area children

The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health has awarded about $2,056,000 in grants to continue developing and strengthening mental health services and supports for children, youth and families in Houston and Harris County.

Eight mental health providers will receive one-year of additional funding through a continuation of the 2009 Ima Hogg Children’s Mental Health Grants program. The original grants were based on recommendations from a two-year, community-wide strategic planning process conducted by the City of Houston and Harris County Joint City/County Commission on Children.

"With the additional year of funding, we are better positioning these organizations to serve their communities for years to come," said Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., executive director of the foundation. "Miss Ima Hogg's vision, caring and concern for children and families lives on in the community she loved through her generous gift.”

The original eight grantees that were selected will now receive a fourth year of funding to continue offering services to children, youth and their families to help build capacity and focus on sustainability efforts.

The grantees are:

• Asian American Family Services (AAFS) ($159,294) will continue to enhance the mental health and social well-being of children and families in Houston’s ethnically diverse Asian immigrant and refugee communities through Project SHINE. During the next year, AAFS will use lessons learned and evaluation results to improve program services and supports by developing or making modifications to its current curriculum to be culturally relevant to its constituents.
• ChildBuilders ($102,014) will focus on building capacity and sustainability of mental health promotion in 45 Head Start centers in high-need areas through the Tools for Building Healthy Families program. ChildBuilders will also promote mental health and resiliency by educating 3,000 children identified as high risk, including their parents and their teachers.
• Collaborative for Children ($862,580) will continue the South Region Children’s Mental Health Collaborative to provide a full range of quality mental health prevention, intervention and treatment services. This year, Collaborative for Children plans to increase parenting services and supports.
• DePelchin Children’s Center ($136,732) will continue the Lazos Program to provide culturally competent mental health screening and trauma-focused treatment for Latino children and families. DePelchin will also work on expanding the target age group and cultural population to meet the needs of all children.
• Family Services of Greater Houston ($93,193) will use the fourth year of funding to implement classes on the attachment theory for teachers, child care workers and parents in the Spring Branch area through the Building Bonds, Building Futures program. Family Services also plans to build a sustainability plan that includes enhancing revenue streams for counseling services offered to children.
• Harris County Protective Services for Children and Adults ($490,597) will focus the next year of Kashmere SWAP on five identified schools to provide a continuum of mental health services and supports to students and their families in the Kashmere/Trinity Gardens area. This year, SWAP plans to increase emphasis on program evaluation and developing collaborative relationships with key partners.
• Montrose Counseling Center ($130,945) will continue to serve gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning teens ages 13 to 18 in high schools in Houston and Harris County through peer support groups. Montrose will also establish a plan for sustaining capacity and funding for the Safe Zones Project.
• Star of Hope Mission ($81,391) will increase assessments focused on social and emotional development, build new classrooms and increase the number of children served through Project Early Start.

“These grants will benefit thousands of children, youth and their families in the Houston community and sustain mental health services that may have been out of reach otherwise,” said Vicky Coffee-Fletcher, the program officer for the grant initiative. “This fourth year of funding will strengthen services in some of Houston’s most underserved communities.”

The grant initiative is provided through the Ima Hogg Fund, one of the foundation’s two major endowments. For more than 30 years, the fund has supported mental health services for children, youth and their families in a variety of settings in Houston and Harris County. Since 1976, the Ima Hogg endowment has funded 167 grants totaling more than $28 million. This year’s grantees previously received a total of $7.9 million over a three-year period through the endowment.