Our Work
YourMomCares is celebrity and influencer moms banding together to remove the stigma surrounding kids mental health. We do this by creating and funding innovative, cutting-edge programs and solutions which have a direct impact on children and adolescents. YourMomCares is changing the dialogue from mental illness to mental wellness. In addition to strategic partnerships, #ymc’s “Mobile Moms Fund” allows us to quickly go where the need is greatest (as moms always do!) to fund work being done to address a variety of pediatric emergencies.
Our Process
YourMomCares funds innovative and impactful solutions to the mental wellness challenges facing today's kids, which means working with best in class partners. #ymc vets prospective nonprofit partners through a process of research and relationship building, which ensures that your gift to #ymc is funding only the best, most trusted organizations.
At YourMomCares, we do the work for you. If you believe that no child should suffer alone or be unable to receive mental health services because of the family’s financial situation, race, gender or sexual orientation, then support YourMomCares today.
Our Partners
Children's Health Fund
Since early 2018 YourMomCares and Children’s Health Fund (CHF) have been working together to raise awareness of the urgent need for health and mental health services for children. The first phase of our partnership was formalized with a #ymc grant to CHF’s NY Program, in support of mental health services for children and families living in homeless shelters. YourMomCares then launched a long-term partnership with CHF to help expand its impact on mental wellness for children in 2019 and beyond, by launching the Kids Mental Wellness Matters Initiative.
The Los Angeles Children’s Health Project (LACHP), a partnership between Cedar-Sinai Medical Center and Children’s Health Fund (CHF), cares for children in South Los Angeles, a community that has a long history of poverty, widespread unemployment, crime, drugs and gangs. Without appropriate intervention and support, these damaging childhood experiences can have a lasting impact on a child’s ability to regulate emotions, cope with adversity, and succeed in school. Thanks to funding from YourMomCares beginning in 2019, LACHP's mental health team is utilizing its experience and cultural sensitivity to meet the complex needs of these children. The program provides psychosocial assessments, including suicide screening, and referrals for patients and their families seen in the mobile medical clinics. Families with children with special needs receive more intensive case management and help in advocating for services for their child. In the community, the program provides parenting classes and therapeutic groups for students at local schools. LACHP’s model co-locates mental health and medical services on two mobile medical clinics (MMCs). The mental health team is available to meet with any patient or caretaker who needs psychosocial support, case management or mental health services. The MMC serves the community at convenient sites such as schools, WIC centers (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, Children), and public housing developments, and is often a first stop for people in need. Urgent needs are dealt with immediately, and referrals are made to outside services for anything they can’t do on site.
In addition to services on the mobile clinics, YMC has funded the creation of “Rising Stars” the first ever group therapy program for teens at Union Rescue Mission (URM), a large homeless shelter on Skid Row. These eight-week group sessions are focused on behavioral coping strategies, such as anger management and dealing with trauma. The population at URM, like most shelters, is very transient; one of the ongoing difficulties is that children attend sessions for several weeks, but then leave, often for more stable housing. To address this challenge, each session is designed to build on previous course work but is also relevant as a standalone class. Repetition throughout the course reinforces key concepts. If space permits, children can join at any point in the program.
YMC’s goal is to support expansion of Rising Stars to at least 5 more groups in 2020.
In the future, #ymc and CHF will work to expand the Kids Mental Wellness Matters Initiative to cover every CHF program across the country, ensuring that physical health and mental wellness are accessible to all children, no matter their circumstances.
UPMC Western Psychiatric Hospital and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh are improving the approach to behavioral health for children and adolescents by utilizing a digital platform to help patients. Through this new solution, a mobile application ("app") will keep kids healthy by incorporating both digital behavioral health therapy and human interaction via trained mental wellness coaches who are connected to the Pittsburgh medical care network. The app is structured like an interactive game for the children, but use is directly monitored by medical professionals.
In 2019, #ymc established the YourMomCares Fund at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Foundation and made a $500,000 commitment to pilot this ground-breaking new approach with 500 patients. This cutting edge Digital Platform uses UPMC's trained mental wellness coaches, not A.I. or a robot. What makes UPMC's project groundbreaking in the field, and unlike any other “app” in the country is the integration of findings into each patient's primary care system records for use by pediatricians and all others involved in the child's health care. Early intervention has the potential to diagnose an anxiety disorder for many of these kids. And for those that it does not, it becomes a critical part of their ongoing treatment and care.
Once UPMC has the results from the pilot program, it will set the stage for their ability to make this a billable service through insurance companies, which will increase access to behavioral health services in a cost-effective way for millions of children across the country.
Press
Mobile Moms Fund
#ymc’s Mobile Moms Fund allows us to quickly go where the need is greatest (as moms always do!) to fund work being done by reputable nonprofit organizations to address a variety of pediatric mental wellness emergencies.
Through our Mobile Moms Fund #ymc has donated to the following organizations:
The Center for Pediatric Resilience - The Harris Project - RAICES - Women’s Refugee Commission - Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights - Flint Child Health and Development Fund - SNACK - Operation Gratitude - The Trevor Project - Moms Demand Action - Sheba Medical Center