Opening the Barn Doors

Emma: Can you tell me a little bit about your journey to Healing Prairie Farm?  

Drew: So, I recently joined CommUnity at the start of the summer having spent just over a decade in crisis services. I oversee a variety of crisis intervention services that are along the spectrum from crisis line to mobile crisis response to law enforcement liaison.

Since I’ve been with CommUnity, I’ve done some of the clinical work on the farm – some of the programmatic and training initiatives to continue to build out the farm.

E: Are there any moments that have stood out as really meaningful to you with the farm program so far? 

D: Sure, I think any opportunity to engage with a young person – a kiddo, a teen, whoever it is – who is struggling with their mental health or struggling through a crisis situation, is something that I always find to be an amazing opportunity, an opportunity of privilege. 

The farm provides that. It provides a really unique opportunity to engage with young people and their families, which is also a really great aspect. Youth don’t exist in a vacuum. They have a family behind them and being able to kind of comprehensively support them has been an awesome opportunity. 

E: What’s something that you’re passionate about outside of the realm of crisis and mental health?  

D: I play the banjo and I have a small blacksmith shop that I spend what free time I can find in it. I also have a small therapy practice where I spend some time as well.

E: That’s wonderful! You’re certainly known around CommUnity for sometimes playing the banjo at the farm.

D: Yes, and also absolutely my family. I have some young kiddos. I spend as much time with them as possible. 

E: That’s very cool. What do you make at your blacksmith shop? 

D: Everything. I make things from hatchets and axes to decorative things. I like functional stuff, so anything that looks cool to me, I’ll try to make.

E: Can you tell me a little bit about the current struggles that we’re facing at the farm right now? 

D: I think one of the biggest struggles has been some of the kids coming in presenting with multifaceted and highly complex cases that involve significant case management.

Community partnerships, care coordination – and that’s very resource heavy. It’s very time heavy. We’ve had a number of kiddos at the farm where family engagement was quite limited. Even things like hunting down a government issued ID, which is the first step in really connecting them with services, can be immensely time consuming for our staff. It’s something everyone at the farm is happy to do and it’s incredibly important, but it’s extremely resource heavy – but very important.  

E: And is there anything that readers of the annual report could do to help ease that in any way? Any kind of support that they could provide that would be helpful? 

D: I think the farm is a very, very unique model.

It’s a very special model. Human services providing compassionate care in a unique setting to youth who come from a variety of backgrounds with unique needs. I think there are numerous ways to support the farm and the work that it’s doing – including monetary donations – but also donating foodstuffs. Lots of kiddos out there need food. Also, just learning a little bit more about the program because it is such a unique model.

We’re so fortunate to have it here in eastern Iowa that I would encourage anyone not familiar with it to learn a little bit about it because it is so unique, it’s so cool. 

E: You mentioned potentially donating food items. Are there any desired food items that the kids love?

D: They love snacks, they love ice cream. We do bring in some folks from United Action for Youth that will actually cook with the kids. We’ve shown them how to grill, bake, and cook stuff.

Virtually everything that gets cooked out there gets eaten pretty quickly. So anything really, is awesome. 

E: I know something that we tell people that are donating to the food bank is to think about what your favorite food is and donate the ingredients for that dish. So, it sounds like that would be another great message for people for donating to the farm. 

D: Yes, awesome. And in addition to that, anything that youth might need in their life, clothing items, hygiene items. Unfortunately, some of the kids that come to us come from unhoused situations where they have very limited personal belongings. So in addition to trying to address,  in the short term, their mental health needs, we’re also trying to provide them with stuff that many of us take for granted. 

Nice clothes, stuff to wear to school, school supplies, anything like that.  

E: Would we still be encouraging folks to donate things like a Target gift card or a Walmart gift card so that kids can pick out their own clothing?  

D: Yeah, I think anything like that would be a welcome donation. 

E: Looking  into the future, the next three years and beyond, what challenges do you see the farm program facing? 

D: There are always challenges to working with billable services through Medicaid, which has unique challenges that change year by year. So I anticipate ensuring adequate funding as it relates to making sure that what we’re doing at the farm is effective – that we can keep up robust case management and crisis intervention services – is going to be an ongoing struggle. 

Because, like I said, any number of kiddos coming out of the farm require really extensive support in a really, really short period of time, and making sure we have enough resources to provide that is going to continue to be a big ongoing challenge. 

E: Alright, so I’ve got two questions that kind of go along with each other. How can readers help the farm right now and how can readers provide ongoing support to the farm?  

D: As I mentioned earlier, I would encourage readers to be curious about the farm model because it is so unique and then making a donation of any type that was already discussed. I think that would be great. 

Also, raising awareness for the program. Just talking to others so they might know about this really cool program model here in Johnson County and the unique environment that it provides to a kiddo in crisis is something that we should all really be proud of.  

E: Can you tell me just a little bit about the partnership between community and United Action for Youth?

D: Yeah, it’s a great relationship. UAY and CommUnity share a lot of philosophical views on client-centered care, on humanistic care, on unconditional positive regard. So it’s a natural partnership. 

Whereas CommUnity is really providing a lot of crisis services expertise, overseeing day-to-day operations of the farm, UAY is providing a lot of tailored intervention to kiddos that are out there. That’s everything from group counseling sessions to staff to coming out and teaching them how to bake various desserts. So it’s been a really wonderful partnership and it’s at the advantage of the youth that are being served out there that both organizations are able to work together in such a way.

E: That’s great. Is there anything else that we haven’t already talked about that you would want people to know about the farm or about the first year of the program? 

D: Just that we’re very excited and again, the youth that have been out there have really enjoyed it and found it to be such a different model than what they’re typically used to or expected from a crisis stabilization setting.

So I’m very excited to continue to grow it and see what other unique programming models we can build.