What would it take to create a region where kids are thriving and have what they need to reach their full potential? The St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund (CSF) knows that in order to make this vision a reality, families need easy access to quality and equitable resources and supports that are rooted in their unique needs. As a funder of mental and behavioral health services for children and families, we feel our role in achieving this is to be responsive to community need, leverage new and existing partnerships, and invest strategically to drive our region toward building a strong, equitable mental and behavioral health system.
Last year, we shared that our board of directors approved a new impact framework – a roadmap to guide our work into the future. This framework is built around four main commitments:
- We are system oriented.
- We fund what works.
- We fund what’s needed.
- We advocate for kids.
In this post, we’ll share with you what each of these four tenets mean to us, and how they are helping us create a better system of care for kids and families in St. Louis County.
Being System-Oriented
As a major investor in St. Louis’ mental and behavioral health system, we acknowledge the responsibility of our position in the sector. We also recognize that mental health and wellness for kids and families is connected to other systems and communities they interact with every day: at school, at the doctor, in their family-life, in sports and recreation, and, for some kids, in foster care and in the justice system.
Though these systems are each unique and complex, being system-oriented means considering how the mental and behavioral health system intersects with all the others that play a role in families’ lives. This will help us determine how we contribute in a way that drives the greatest positive impact – whether that’s who we invest in, how we invest, what partnerships we seek out, or how we operate as an organization.
Funding What Works
At its most basic, we are committed to investing based on evidence of positive impact. We believe all kids and families deserve access to high-quality, supportive resources, so we are responsible for ensuring the services we invest in are truly and equally improving the lives of every child served.
To do this, we are challenging ourselves and our partners to grow in how we assess what works. It involves using hard data and community input to understand how to invest our finite resources in ways that will lead to better mental and behavioral health outcomes and improve the overall wellness of kids and families in St. Louis County.
In partnership with SKIP, CSF conducts a needs assessment with St. Louis County fourth-graders in 2022.
Funding What’s Needed
Funding what’s needed means we’re making investments based on what evidence tells us our community needs or wants. By conducting studies or using existing “hard data” to assess information related to education, public safety, healthcare, and more we can begin to paint a picture of where our community is facing the greatest challenges. But hard data and numbers are only part of the story.
To fully understand what’s needed, it’s important we hear directly from the community we serve. This may include conducting community health needs assessments, engaging with our funded partners, and being continuously in conversation with youth and families to understand their needs and desires and build trust with the communities we serve. Putting these two pieces together will help us achieve a more meaningful understanding of what’s needed in our region.
Advocating for Kids
Kids are at the very heart of our work, so it’s crucial that we are advocates for making St. Louis County a place where all kids are supported and can thrive. Advocating for kids can take many forms.
It looks like supporting policies that support kids and families and collaborating with all levels of government. It means prioritizing preventive care to keep kids healthy throughout their lives. It means giving youth and families a platform to tell us what they need, whether that’s including them in our health needs assessments, giving them a microphone to share their experiences with adults, operationalizing a Youth Advisory Council to make recommendations to CSF’s board, or ensuring their voice is represented in budgetary decisions.
Panelists share their perspectives on mental health at CSF’s 2024 Youth Voices: A Panel on Mental Health event.
CSF staff visit the Missouri State Capitol on 2025 Child Advocacy Day to talk to legislators about the needs of kids of families.
Looking Ahead
Our impact framework calls on us to use both data and community input to strengthen the system of care we invest in for the benefit of the community we serve. As we move forward in our work, these central tenets will help guide us toward our vision of ensuring all children in St. Louis County have the supports they need to thrive.