New Staunton Farm Foundation leader has a mission: advancing equitable mental health and substance abuse disorder care

From the beginning of her career, Monique Jackson has been passionate about children’s services and equitable mental health care for all, especially those from underserved communities.

In her new position as Staunton Farm Foundation executive director, she will be able to advance that work through grants to organizations and partnerships throughout the 10 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania that it supports.

Jackson joins the foundation after serving as Familylinks Inc. chief operations officer for four years. In that role she opened Allegheny County’s first treatment program for youth who have experienced sexual exploitation, started an Open Access Intake model to ensure clients have timely access to assessments for mental health and substance use disorders, worked with insurance carriers to improve reimbursement rates, and advocated for systemic changes to improve service delivery, according to a foundation news release announcing her appointment.

“With her background in mental health services and advocacy for health equity, we know she will guide Staunton Farm Foundation’s mission and vision to create meaningful change, partner with impactful organizations, and continue to advance mental health and substance use treatments,” Staunton Farm Foundation Board President Suzy Weaver said in the release.

“Staunton Farm Foundation exists thanks to Matilda ‘Aunt Daisy’ Staunton Craig’s dream to use her estate to benefit people with behavioral health challenges and illness,” Paul “Stoney” Griffiths, board vice president, past president and Staunton Craig family member, wrote in an email. “Monique is joining a line of powerful and influential individuals who helped bring this organization’s purpose to life. We are confident that she and the foundation’s team members will continue to carry forward that legacy of passion and dedication into the second quarter of the 21st century.”

The foundation has distributed $11 million in funding over the past four years to local partners and agencies, furthering its mission of promoting mental wellness, the release stated. It is dedicated to improving the lives of people who live with mental illness and substance use disorders and works to enhance behavioral health treatment, support and recovery through grant making.

Prior to her Familylinks role, Jackson worked for 13 years at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, first as a practice manager and then director of ambulatory services. She also served four years as Community Guidance Center’s base service unit and family based program director in Indiana, Pennsylvania.

Familylinks traces its origins to when the Parent & Child Guidance Center and Whale’s Tale merged in 2001. Vintage Center for Active Adults became a part of Familylinks in 2015.

From her past work, Jackson said she knows that mental health care is different from physical health. Her role at Familylinks taught her a great deal about regional organizations providing that care and how to coordinate services.

That nonprofit’s director of development and outreach Lauren Galletta said Jackson not only learned more but also added to Familylinks’ organizational growth and community impact. She highlighted two of her achievements during her tenure.

During the pandemic, Galletta said, when all services were virtual, the demand for behavioral and mental health and substance abuse disorder care grew and continued to grow after restrictions lifted. To meet that need, she said Jackson suggested an open access model. That meant no appointment necessary, and it let clients take the first necessary steps for their care.

“It’s more common now but not then,” she said. “We were one of first organizations in this part of town to do this.  At the time wait lists and wait times were astronomical.”

Familylinks has 12 sites throughout Allegheny County, and today open access is available at its Shadyside and Banksville Road offices. It also offers it at its Delmont, Westmoreland County, site, a location Jackson suggested the nonprofit open.

Jackson also helped Familylinks secure a contract with Allegheny County for sexually trafficked and abused youth and young adults. “You would think a county with such a small population would not have this problem. Unfortunately it’s [true],” Galletta said.

In the resulting very successful cutting-edge program, the young people are taken to a Mercer County treatment facility, the location a key factor in treatment.

“It’s very intentional,” Galletta explained. “Allegheny County is what they know and where their networks are. Moving them out is removing a lot of what they know in an intentional way so they can focus on their treatment and their school, and they can get their life back on track.”

As Staunton Farm launches applications for its capacity-building grants to organizations to help develop behavioral health and substance use programs, Jackson has gone on site visits with Senior Program Officer Bethany Hemingway, who has worked for the foundation for 14 years. Grants may be used to contract for technical assistance in training or programming, program evaluation, strategic planning, physical and behavioral health integration projects, data collection programs/software, electronic health record upgrades, and other expenses necessary to achieve the organizations’ goals.

Those applications are due by April 9, and the foundation will make its decisions by July. Successful agencies and organizations need to use the funds by July 2026.

Nonprofit organizations usually have general operational needs to be sustainable, Jackson said, and these grants ease that burden. “In the world of mental health, such as youth services, you don’t receive enough funding to keep you sustainable. Staunton Farm Foundation is committed to these organizations and offers these [grants to pay for items] that some people would consider luxuries but really are standard things.”

For example, the $25,000 grant can help with upgrading software or artificial intelligence integration to alleviate operational stress on reporting and intake services, or new hardware. 

The foundation has two other grant cycles in addition to this one. Jackson said not only does it provide grants, but also it will help connect them to partnerships and other resources.

“Come to us with something your organization really needs, and we will advance it,” she said. “They can use us as resources if they have questions.”

She said the suggestions could range from working with another community organization as a partner or applying to a community foundation for additional funding. From her past budgeting and operational work, she said she could help them consider reducing costs possibly by seeking payments through billing for services.

“No one can work in a vacuum in human services. The need is so vast, and you don’t have enough resources on your team alone,” she said. “It’s not a competition. We’re in this work together. If you want people to get better, you’re going to work together, you’re going to collaborate.”

Staunton Farm Foundation has a Rural Behavioral Mental Health Care Conference coming up this fall, an event it holds biannually, as a free resource for providers so they can become more impactful and inform their service delivery. Any organization in its 10-county area can attend, rural or not. The goal, she said, is to ensure good service to clients and patients as well as coordination of care.

She learned a great deal about the community integration piece during her time at Children’s Hospital and offers that as an example. “The best method is to take mental health care out of psychiatric hospital service. Parents wanted to come [and take their children for care] to their doctor’s office or Children’s Hospital to get rid of that stigma.  And they found that the services their children could receive was much better,” she said.  “The appointment show rate when that took place was over 90%. People were keeping their children’s appointments. It happened because it was improving access to places people were already going to instead of having to go to a mental health hospital.”

Allegheny County’s Health Department conducted a major survey of its residents, and the results, she said, showed too that they want convenient, community-based access to services. An issue for all: transportation. They responded that often they can’t get to needed health care services far from their residences.

Familylinks received grants from Staunton Farm off and on for a number of years, Galletta said. To assume the leadership of it continues Jackson’s passion for mental health treatment. “She will be a great asset for the foundation,” Galletta said. “I told her that is the dream. She has earned it.”

The Familylinks staff misses Jackson not only for her work as its chief operating officer but also for her other contributions and guidance.  

“We were a good duo,” Galletta said. “I am a grant writer, but she was a good visionary. She laid out all the plans [for programs], hired all the people that made them the success they are today.

“She really was a true champion for our mission during her time here. She was a coach and a mentor to many people, including myself.  She left Familylinks better than she found it.”

Jackson follows Joni Schwager, who worked for Staunton Farm for 26½ years and was its first executive director. To continue her efforts, Jackson will visit governmental administration offices in all 10 counties and find out what their key needs are for their residents and the prime partners providing mental health services. Then she will begin reaching out to those organizations and talk to leaders about their strategic directions, needs and priorities.

Overall she sees the foundation’s grant-making process and direction as funding programs and initiatives that will help her dream: ensuring that everyone has access to timely, evidence-based, holistic behavioral health care. And the need exists for organizations offering those services to be paid for providing it equitably, she added.

Schwager wrote a farewell blog post on the foundation’s website with a list of items she wants to see happen to continue the fight to change attitudes toward mental and substance abuse disorder, fight the stigma associated with them and improve care. She said plenty of work is left to do, despite the 1,621 grants the foundation awarded during her tenure.

From her list, two things stood out to Jackson: the jail no longer being the biggest mental health provider in the county and carving behavioral health back into physical health.

The new executive director pledged to work hard to achieve those goals and others. And, she said, with the visits she has planned she will ensure the foundation is known not only to organizations and nonprofits that have received grants but also those who have not.

The 10 counties Staunton Farm Foundation serves are Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington and Westmoreland.