“When you call asking for mental health assistance, the last thing you want to hear is that you can’t be seen right now,” says Wendell Covell, deputy director of programs at Jewish Family Services of Delaware.

The JFS Mental Health Fellowship Program was an innovative response to the rapidly increasing mental health demand throughout our community, as well as the shortage of Licensed Mental Health providers throughout the state. Our Fellowship Program was designed to provide Master Level Social Workers and Mental Health Counselors with the most advanced trainings, clinical supervision, and support possible so that they could grow in their competency, while carrying out caseloads of 20-25 weekly individual, family, and group sessions in a multitude of community-based, homebased, school-based, and office-based settings (often times carrying out sessions at no cost to the client).

The program was designed to provide JFS Fellows with a plethora of different experiences and trainings so that they could find their specialty and begin to focus more on developing the skillset for their identified specialty. This can range from working with our geriatric, refugee, school-aged, or emerging adult population to trauma, addiction, personality disorders, and family systems therapy.

Together, these fellows addressed unmet mental health needs in Delaware by providing mental health support to more than 1,300 Delawareans in need of support. Much of that therapy was directed toward individuals in high-need groups through 30 community partnerships and provided at no cost to the clients. In Wilmington alone, examples include single women and families in emergency shelter and transitional housing at YWCA Delaware, youths aging out of foster care in the LifeLines program at the West End Neighborhood House and sexual abuse survivors at Friendship House.

To read more about the impact of the JFS Fellowship Program, click here. 

In May 2022, U.S. Senators Tom Carper and Chris Coons, as well as Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester (all D-Del.) visited the Salvation Army in Wilmington to announce over $5 million in federal funding for projects to help improve the quality of life for Delawareans throughout the state. $3.5 million of that funding was designated to JFS Delaware for the Mental Health Fellowship Program.

That funding was part of nearly $100 million for community projects up and down the state secured by Delaware’s congressional delegation. Those investments were included in the 2022 Omnibus Appropriations Bill signed into law by President Biden on March 15, 2022.

“Organizations like Jewish Family Services, the Salvation Army, and Westside Health have been instrumental in helping support Delawareans through difficult and unprecedented times,” Senator Coons said. “I’m grateful to have helped deliver millions of dollars in critical funding to groups doing the work on the ground to meet the needs of our communities in Wilmington and across the state.”