The Greater Lynn Senior Services and Peabody Department of Health were awarded $300,000 to start behavioral-health-navigator programs from Beth Israel Lahey Health.
The GLSS and DPH were two of four inaugural recipients of this grant. The grant will be dispersed over three years and help hire and train a behavioral-health navigator at both nonprofits.
The role of a navigator is to help connect residents with mental-health, substance-use-disorder, and food-insecurity resources across the cities through referrals.
“There is a tremendous lack of behavioral health support for a lot of folks, especially among the most vulnerable populations,” GLSS Director of Planning and Development Strategies Valerie Parker Callahan said.
She said the grant will help strengthen the organization’s network of services in the community.
”I think there’s a lot of promise here and a lot of potential. And we’re just really very grateful that we were awarded the grant,” Parker Callahan said.
She said when the navigator starts in September, the service will be based exclusively in Lynn and provided to all ages.
Sara Grinnell, the director of the Division of Social Services for the Peabody Department of Public Health, said the city was proud and appreciative to be one of the first recipients of the grant.
She said the grant funding “will go far in our efforts to design and implement intervention and support programs to assist Peabody residents and their families in need of behavioral health services.”
Grinnell said the goal is to use the grant to hire a multilingual care coordinator, particularly one with fluency in Haitian Creole.
She said Peabody created the Division of Social Services last year and applied for the Beth Israel grant after it recognized the opportunity to provide additional services to its non-English speaking population.
She added that the application for the care coordinator is now open, and the city is really hoping to find the right person.
