Grant will allow Holy Cross Ministries to offer trauma-informed care

Friday, Jul. 31, 2020

PARK CITY — Holy Cross Ministries is the recipient of this year’s Park City Community Foundation Women’s Giving Fund grant. 

The $40,000 grant will allow the Holy Cross Ministries’ counseling program in Park City to hire an additional bilingual mental health therapist to provide trauma-informed care to underserved women and children.

In the past, in the selection process for the grant, “We had always been a runner-up, but we have never been awarded the full amount,” said Emmie Gardner, Holy Cross Ministries CEO.

She added that HCM officials were humbly grateful for the support that the Park City Community Foundation has provided them through the grant and “through all of the other efforts that they do to bring the Holy Cross voice to the community.”

Women’s Giving Fund is an initiative of the Park City Community Foundation, which has approximately 1,400 members. The grants are used to help local women and children in need. 

This year, while analyzing which of HCM’s programs would need the most support, the nonprofit’s officials realized that they were in dire need of mental health services for the people in Park City.

“It becomes critical” when people need mental health but cannot receive it because their insurance doesn’t cover it, Gardner said. 

Realizing that their organization didn’t have a counselor for those specific services in Park City, HCM officials decided to tailor their grant application toward that goal so their clients didn’t have to go to multiple places in order to get the help that they needed.

Having received the grant, beginning in September, HCM will have a bilingual mental health therapist to help underserved families heal from trauma. Gardner estimates that the therapist will serve around 300 women and children over the next 12 months.

“This person really knows and understand the journey that they [our clients] have endured through their lives,” Gardner said.

HCM clients in Park City are mainly people who are immigrants working in the service industry, which has been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Just being able to talk about the impact that COVID-19 is having in the less-fortunate population, in the immigrant community, is really important,” Gardner said.

In keeping with the tradition and principles of Holy Cross Ministries’ founders, providing those mental health services is crucial through these times, Gardner said.

The Sisters of the Holy Cross, who founded Holy Cross Ministries, “have always had this fierce passion to help the most vulnerable, the underserved in our community. ... Now more than ever, it is very important to be there for them,” Gardener said.

“Christ always loves everyone, and in these times of COVID, for us to help anyone, regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation, is crucial,” she added. “We really feel that we are filling this vision through this COVID time, through this time of racial disparity, through this horrible immigration time ... by truly being present and bringing Christ to others in the form of being service providers. We want people to know that they are valued, that they are worthy.”