PEORIA, Ill. – The efforts to provide expanded mental health treatment and services to youth in the Peoria area are getting a boost from the federal government.
U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood said Tuesday he helped secure a $2 million federal “Community Funding Project” grant for the UnityPoint Foundation, as it raises money to turn the former Heddington Oaks into home base for the “Young Minds Project.”
“The core of ‘Community funding Projects’ at the federal level is projects and federal dollars that are going to help communities,” said LaHood (R-Dunlap). “Really, this was an easy sell. When we saw the application, we went through it with UnityPoint. We laid it out, and we brought it through the legislative process — the appropriations process. What this will do for our community is transformational.”
LaHood calls it “remarkable” that years of thinking has turned in to reality through UnityPoint.
“The need in our community for behavioral health services and mental health services…it’s a long time coming in this community,” said LaHood. “It’s been talked about for, roughly, 20 to 25 years.”
UnityPoint officials say they’re still in the planning stages of how they’ll turn Heddington Oaks into a youth behavioral health facility, and they’re also in the midst of raising at least half of the $24 million needed for the project.
An opening date could still be sometime next year.
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