Grant Brings $250,000 to Expand Reentry and Crisis Services

On December 31, 2025, Southern Highlands was awarded a $250,000 grant from the West Virginia First Foundation’s Momentum Initiative to expand reentry and crisis services serving Mercer, McDowell and Wyoming counties. The award is intended to bolster local capacity for behavioral health, crisis intervention and reentry supports so individuals in these counties can access services closer to home.

For McDowell County, the grant represents a potential shift in how people experiencing behavioral health crises and those returning from incarceration find help. Reentry services can reduce barriers to housing, employment, treatment and community supervision compliance, while crisis services offer immediate interventions aimed at preventing harm, reducing emergency department utilization and connecting people to ongoing care. The foundation’s investment is targeted at strengthening those systems at the community level.

Public health implications are significant. Expanding crisis response and reentry supports can help address unmet behavioral health needs that contribute to repeated emergency responses and involvement in the criminal legal system. By increasing locally available supports, the initiative seeks to lower transportation burdens, shorten waiting times for care and improve continuity between acute crisis services and long-term treatment and recovery programs. Those changes can also ease pressure on regional emergency departments and law enforcement agencies that often serve as default responders in rural areas.

The grant also touches on broader questions of health equity and policy. Rural counties like McDowell face longstanding shortages of behavioral health clinicians and limited social services, which disproportionately affect low-income residents and people with histories of incarceration. Investments that build local capacity are a step toward addressing structural gaps, but they also require coordination with state funding streams, Medicaid services and workforce development to create sustainable change.

Southern Highlands will use the Momentum Initiative funding to expand its presence and programming in the three-county region. For residents, the most immediate benefits could be more accessible crisis intervention, improved connections to treatment after a crisis, and targeted reentry supports that reduce the barriers people face when returning to their communities.

As implementation proceeds, local leaders, health providers and community organizations will play a key role in shaping how services are delivered and ensuring they reach the county’s most vulnerable residents. Strengthening those partnerships will be essential to turning the grant dollars into long-term improvements in access, outcomes and equity for McDowell County.