Today at 11:00 am CT, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation will present an award of $78,574 to Youth First, Inc.
Youth First partners with 92 schools across 11 Indiana counties. Youth First Social Workers follow behavioral health best practices to proactively meet with individual students, facilitate small groups, and present to classrooms and large groups as well as consult with parents, teachers, and other community agencies. They are easily accessed by any enrolled student, and services are always free of charge. When school buildings closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 crisis, this low-barrier access to crucial mental health support was threatened.
Thanks to the Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation grant, Youth First has now equipped its clinical team with HIPAA-compliant telehealth tools and training to continue their critical work. Through this funding, their proven model of building life skills for mental health resilience and brokering community resources to meet basic needs can continue, if and when school buildings are closed, or students or staff are quarantined or ill. These telehealth tools allowed Youth First’s services and programs to be delivered uninterrupted this past school year, despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Indiana, data from the  State of the Nation’s Mental Health report shows significantly fewer mental health diagnoses last year, particularly among children and adolescents, compared to 2019.
· 10 percent overall drop for young children
· 5 percent overall drop for adolescents
These findings are part of a report based on Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield claims from 1.8 million Hoosiers.
