Mental Health Minute: Simply Hope Family Outreach

BURLEY, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Helping families in need is the goal of a Burley nonprofit entering its tenth year of operation.

In this week’s Mental Health Minute, we’ll show you their impact on the community.

Simply Hope Family Outreach is a nonprofit in Burley focused on helping the community with mental health struggles ranging from depression and anxiety to substance abuse and more.

“This started out with one woman, Nancy Winmill, who started the program,” said Jon Maher, the Clinical Director for Mental Health Services at Simply Hope Family Outreach. “She was really trying to do something for her son who was having some issues and there weren’t the resources that he needed, so she started basically this support group and it’s grown from there.”

Maher said that the support group eventually became the outreach organization that has served the area for the past decade.

During that time, they partnered with Burley High School and the counselors there to give students a place to get additional help off-campus.

“We’re able to help some of the counselors take some of the burden off their plate,” Maher said. “We’re able to work with teens to provide counseling services, if kids have no insurance, because of the levy we’re actually able to if a kid needs counseling up to six free sessions no charge to the family, no charge to the teens.”

Offering these services has led to positive payoffs.

“We’ve increased kids' self-worth and self-esteem,” Maher said. “We’ve got some kids who are really great success stories, and we have some adults who have been some really great success stories so it’s having a huge impact and it’s very, very positive.”

Maher adds that access to more counseling options in the Burley area has made a big difference in the community.

“We {Burley} were number one or number two in the state in terms of suicidality, and within one year of starting the counseling program, and working with the safety and assessment center, and Cassia County and the levy, we are actually at number 14 in the state of Idaho,” Maher said.

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