By MATT CHANDLER
mchandler@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1654

Spend a few minutes in a room with Kenneth Houseknecht and you come to understand how passionate he is about his work. Talk with his co-workers and you see that passion for helping others is a prerequisite for working at the Mental Health Association of Erie County.

Houseknecht signed on last year as executive director of the nonprofit, which is the only organization in Western New York to offer pro bono legal assistance to the mentally ill.

Janet McGlone has been with the association for 25 years. She is part of a three-person staff that brings 79 years of collective experience to LSA, its Legal Services and Advocacy program. According to McGlone, there has been a noticeable uptick in demand for services in recent years.

"I know there are more people applying for Social Security disability," she says. "When I first started here, you might have a new client once a week. Now I have one almost every day."

The association attributes the increase in part to a greater understanding that help is available and more people seeking services. Houseknecht pointed to the poor economy as another factor.

Mary McParlane is director of community outreach and consumer education at the MHA. She says it has seven full-time workers and seven part-timers, as well as numerous volunteers who help handle several hundred calls each month from people seeking referrals to other community services. That's in addition to the thousands of clients directly served by the agency each year.

"So many of the calls we receive are from people who don't know where to turn. They may be dealing with a child, or an adult relative who is struggling and they need direction," she says. "So we work with them and try to help them get the services or direction they need."

One of the keys to addressing mental health in the community in early intervention. B.E.S.T., short for basic emotional skills training, is a long-standing program conducted in local schools. It's designed to reach students before mental health issues arise.

"We go into classrooms and work with pre-K through grade two students," he says. "We give them the basic core set of skills they need to develop good emotional health."

Despite funding challenges, the B.E.S.T. program served more than 2,500 students in 28 schools in six school districts in 2010-11. But Houseknecht says the program just scratches the surface.

"We used to be in all of the public schools in Buffalo," he says.

These days, however, cash-strapped nonprofits are forced to make tough choices. Though it's impossible to reach all of the needy students in Buffalo, Houseknecht says his organization strives to make a difference whenever and wherever it can.

"It was determined that it would be more effective to do a more intensive program with fewer kids than a shorter program that reaches all of the kids," he says. "Ideally, we would love to do an intensive program with all of the kids, but to do that, you need more resources."

Mary McParlane is director of community outreach and consumer education at the Mental Health Association of Erie County. She says it also offers a Child and Family Support Program that assists area parents dealing with a child's illness.

"This program is exclusively for the parents that have a child with an emotional behavioral disorder," McParlane says. "Parents feel really alone and they often feel like they are bad parents when, in reality, they are doing their best."

The association works with parents to offer support, particularly when it comes to navigating the system as families struggle to get help for a child.

"We offer the parents educational programs throughout the year and different programs to give them guidance," she says. "But many times, they just need someone to talk to."

Houseknecht, meanwhile, says that among the benefits of early intervention is preventing collateral damage from an individual's illness.

"When anyone in a family begins to suffer from mental illness, it affects the entire family," he says. "Often parents don't know where to go or who to turn to, and they find themselves cast into a situation that many of them never thought they would find themselves in."

He calls the process "terrifying" for many parents and says that staff and volunteers work to directly assist those in need. They also coordinate other services as a step to lessen the emotional trauma that families are going through.

Despite numerous programs operating under its umbrella, Houseknecht says the organization's core mission comes down to two primary functions. 

"We promote mental health and wellness and we work with individuals who have suffered a temporary or permanent loss in mental wellness and their families," he says, adding, "We live in a more challenging time than we have ever seen. It is a more challenging time for adults, for families and certainly for children."

For information about programs and services offered by the Mental Health Association of Erie County, visit www.eriemha.org.