For one week each May, the Mental Health Foundation campaigns around a specific theme for Mental Health Awareness Week. Click here to read more about the campaign on their website!
Mental Health Awareness Week is intended to help generate public debates around how anxiety, sleep deprivation, and exercise can impact our mental health. This year, the focus is mindfulness. Mindfulness is an exercise that helps us change the way we think and feel about our experiences. Mindfulness is a useful tool for people with mental health issues, people dealing with stress, people coping with recurring depression, and anyone trying to improve their mental health and well-being.
Click here to read about mindfulness
Mindfulness includes techniques such as meditation, breathing and yoga, which help us become more aware of our thoughts, feelings, and bodies. The practices can help us improve our relationships, attentiveness, concentration, and emotional insight. Mindfulness can be practiced by anyone – children, young people and adults – individually or with others, in any environment.
Next time you feel overwhelmed or under pressure, try closing your eyes, taking a deep breath and slowly counting down from ten, thinking about how you fell. Or, with the great weather we have, step outside for a brief walk!
Today on #EduTues we are excited to share some great academic accomplishments by our young men from the John C. Tracey Group Home! 
A year before Hearts & Homes moved into our current headquarters at Burtonsville Crossing, a fast, casual, Italian Squisito Pizza & Pasta franchise opened in the shopping center across the street. The restaurant franchise is owned by Gennaro DiMeo and his wife Michele. Squisito’s menu consists of authentic Italian dishes and delicious New York-style pizzas made from family recipes that DiMeo brought from his hometown in Southern Italy. The franchise in Burtonsville is owned by John Minnick, a retiree from U.S. Homeland Security, and managed by Chris Rodney.
March is Social Work Month and this March we had a great time celebrating the social workers at Hearts & Homes who make a difference every day for the youth in our care! The theme this year, “Social Work Paves the Way for Change” spoke directly to our social workers’ mission. Hearts & Homes for Youth’s social workers are part of the change process that each youth experiences when they join the Heats and Homes family.
Our social workers effect change through empowerment: empowering each youth to see the good in themselves and to act on the belief that they can reach their goals. They effect change through dedication: sticking with even the most difficult youth and showing them something different than what they are accustomed to. They effect change through education: utilizing all of their training to provide services that reflect best practices for great outcomes. Change may be a youth smiling or laughing more, finally feeling at home and comfortable to be themselves or a youth graduating high school who was previously failing classes and on the verge of dropping out. Our social workers are tirelessly dedicated to helping our youth identify and develop the academic, vocational, behavioral, and other tools to become independent and productive young adults.
Our social workers work in our group homes, with foster parents, and with our parenting teens in Damamli Independent Living Program providing therapy, psycho-education, training, case management, and ensuring that each youth feels like a part of our family.
