Rep. Sykes Secures Nearly $750,000 For Red Oak Behavioral Health
AKRON, OH — Today, U.S. Representative Emilia Sykes (OH-13) announced the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded Red Oak Behavioral Health $749,997 to expand its school-based mental health workforce services.
“I am thrilled to announce this funding that will help expand Red Oak Behavioral Health’s vital mental health workforce development program. As our country faces a shortage of behavioral health workers, this funding is vital to support members of our community who rely on these services. I will continue to work to bring funding back to Ohio’s 13th Congressional District to help improve our community,” said Rep. Sykes.
“At a time when the need for behavioral health services has nearly doubled nationwide, the funding Rep. Sykes helped secure for Red Oak will have a profound and lasting impact on our ability to expand our workforce and transform additional lives in the Greater Akron community and beyond,” said Red Oak Behavioral Health President and CEO Megan Kleidon.
Red Oak has served the Northeast Ohio community since 1963, providing mental health prevention, intervention, and treatment services to nearly 12,000 children and adolescents each year across 20 school districts and 100 school buildings. This workforce expansion project addresses the current behavioral health workforce shortage by building the clinical capacity of non-licensed providers, allowing for provision of high-quality mental health prevention and treatment services to a projected 3,000 additional children and adolescents in the Greater Akron area over the course of three years.
A training curriculum for core instruction is being developed in partnership with local institutes of higher education and mental health experts, and a total of 192 hours of in-depth on-the-job training, coaching, and supervision will be provided alongside consecutive real–world engagement and service delivery with experienced field clinicians. As a result, these clinicians will be equipped to address the non-therapy mental health treatment needs facing students in the school-based setting, freeing therapists to operate at the top of their license, increasing capacity to bring additional students into care, and reducing overall caseloads for all of our providers.