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We and the Homeless Youth Alliance are creating a mobile therapy office to take harm recution therapy and counseling to ALL the neighborhoods where young people live and hang out. SFDPH is helping us buy and convert a large Ford Transit van into a private and welcoming office. We’ll park at encampments (if invited) and in neighborhoods around the city and set up an outdoor “living room” where young people can meet us casually — allowing them to develop trust at their pace. We’ll carry harm reduction and other outreach supplies, warm drinks and snacks, and offer the option of counseling indoors.

The goal is to connect with youth so that we and others in SF who provide mental health care can forge long-term relationships that will support young people to live healthy lives free from harm. With this project, we can literally meeting young people where they are at. But only with your help –

Board member Alya Briceno is launching a Go FundMe campaign to raise money for all the equipment and supplies that will allow us to work with anyone anywhere: Umbrellas, chairs, backpacks, first aid supplies, food, warm drinks, blankets and cushions, dry clothing, overdose prevention supplies, etc. Plus equipment such as iPads so that we have a fully mobile office.

Also this year, thanks to a grant from the Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits Program, we will be joining the SF Department of Public Health’s Street Medicine Team to engage in therapy with folks who have been homeless for a long time.

Please watch this video and get to know CHRT and their collaborators:

DID YOU KNOW?

• 25% of homeless folks in SF are under 25 (around 2,000), with only 509 shelter beds or rooms available to them. Only 1/4 of them say they have a supportive adult in their life.

• 22% of young adults (18-25) in the US report having a mental illness, but only 1/3 received mental health care in the past year.

• Only 4% who report both mental health and substance use problems received care for both.

So what are we going to do about it?

DONATE NOW