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Marsha Deslauriers has been at the helm of the Community Health Awareness Council (CHAC) for more than six years now, but she said one of her first memories after joining CHAC still stands out as a highlight of her tenure.
“I was standing in line at the Starbucks on Castro Street and I was wearing my CHAC badge,” Deslauriers said in an interview. “The person standing next to me looked at me and looked at my badge and said, ‘Are you with CHAC?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ She paused for a moment and said, ‘You saved my neighbor’s kid’s life.’”
At first, Deslauriers remembers, she thought this interaction was “a bit of an anomaly.”
“Then I learned, particularly in that first year, how often that would happen,” she said.
Earlier this year, Deslauriers announced that she will be retiring at the end of 2022 after more than six years leading the organization, which provides mental health services and psychotherapy for children, adolescents and adults in the community. The fees for CHAC’s clinical services are offered on a sliding scale, making them accessible to a wide range of income levels.
“There’s this huge income gap in our communities,” Deslauriers told the Voice. “My philosophy is, you shouldn’t have to have money to be able to make changes and improvements in your life. Why is that only relegated to someone who can afford two, three, four hundred dollars an hour?”
Deslauriers came to CHAC with a background in everything from nonprofits and startups to operational and financial roles at Fortune 500 companies.
“Running a nonprofit is largely like leading a business,” she said. “It’s just an organization with a different tax status.”
But what drew Deslauriers to CHAC was her personal experience of “having kids and seeing our public education and what they are challenged with,” she said.
“If kids are weighted down by emotional challenges, it makes it much harder for them to make good use of that education,” Deslauriers said. “We lose (the) potential of people.”
When CHAC was first created nearly 50 years ago, it was formed by a joint powers authority (JPA), Deslauriers said, meaning local cities and school districts came together to fund and launch the organization. Today, the three cities of Los Altos, Los Altos Hills and Mountain View, and three school districts, Los Altos School District, Mountain View Los Altos Union High School District and the Mountain View Whisman School District, are included in the JPA.
At the beginning, the JPA funded 100% of its expenses. But over time, as CHAC’s services and costs grew, the organization had to find other ways to bring in funding, and the JPA’s contribution naturally went down.
“When I arrived at CHAC, the cities and the school districts were funding 9% of CHAC’s expenses,” Deslauriers said. “So I, and with board support, focused on increasing and really working with the school districts for their further support, because we supply more than 70 clinicians each year to the schools.”
CHAC’s school-based programming is extensive, ranging from crisis and grief counseling for the children who need it, to preventative, social-emotional learning programs for entire classrooms. Deslauriers worked with the schools to ask for more financial support, and in turn, the organization strengthened its services and offerings to the districts, commensurate with the funding.
“Today, the JPAs fund 34% of CHAC’s expenses,” Deslauriers said. “So we’ve moved it from 9% to 34%, and then we fundraise for the balance.”
Having that infrastructure already established before the pandemic proved critical once March 2020 hit.
“I think because we created those strong structures and accountability and stability in the organization, when the pandemic hit, we were really able to respond very quickly and identify immediate needs and continue to provide services,” Deslauriers said. “Like any leader, just getting the organization through the pandemic was a challenge and we’re very, very proud of the team for all their hard work in making those changes.”
Demand for mental health services, particularly for youth and adolescents, was already increasing before the pandemic. COVID-19 only furthered that need, Deslauriers said.
“So one of my great feelings of accomplishment was ramping up our prevention services, and making our prevention programs one of the pillars of the agency, and much more integrated at the forefront of the agency,” she said.
CHAC reacted quickly to ensure it was reaching even more children with limited resources. School-based social emotional learning programs that used to be for six to eight students, Deslauriers said, pivoted to serve entire classrooms. The organization launched ‘BackTogether!’, an arts-based mental health prevention program that allows one CHAC provider to impact a full classroom of kids.
“I created a mantra when I came in with the team: CHAC, in addition to its very strong clinical skills, needed to be a proactive, agile and responsive agency,” Deslauriers said. “We established that in 2017, and never was it more beneficial than when 2020 hit.”
While COVID-19 was – and continues to be – the most all-consuming challenge that CHAC faced during her tenure, Deslauriers said the organization climbed its fair share of pre-pandemic mountains. The physical state of CHAC’s Mountain View clinic building was one of them.
“There were issues,” Deslauriers said. “Water was streaming in, so we had significant leaks in the roof. Our HVAC system was greatly in need. We replaced toilets, there were plumbing issues.”
CHAC ended up securing support from the city through the Community Development Block Grant program to renovate the building.
“We created a safe and warm and welcoming environment for our clients, and this said to our clients, it was a reflection of how much we respect your dignity,” Deslauriers said. “… It was a physical manifestation of the kind of changes we were bringing to the organization.”
In the nonprofit world, relying on grants and community support to stay afloat is practically a given. And yet, Deslauriers said, “nonprofits provide a disproportionate amount of positive impact on society relative to the funding that they receive.” One day, Deslauriers hopes that behavioral health services can become more integrated with traditional medical services, and be granted the same level of attention and dollars that physical health fields get.
“They are so intertwined,” she said of mental and physical health. “That’s really a direction that I think would help.”
Looking forward to her retirement, Deslauriers said she’s excited to have some “very needed rest” and to spend time with family and friends.
“I think like any leader that was in place during the pandemic, we all had the decision fatigue,” she said. “But I’m certainly keeping it open. As my kids said, ‘Mom, you’ll be retired for 10 minutes.’ I’d like to, at some point in time, make an impact and be engaged in something that has been as rewarding as my service to CHAC and the community has been.”
“There’s just so much to do, and I am very proud of being able to lead the organization and prepare it for its next 50 years.”
Thank you, Marsha Deslauriers, for coming to CHAC and Mountain View with your good heart and business skills. It’s noticeable how well CHAC has served our kids and community during your years.
I enjoyed our conversations regarding the state of youth mental health in this area. Good luck in your retirement.