Brookline Resilient Youth Team

 "Without the Brookline Community Foundation, BRYT would never be where it is today. It is quickly becoming a state and national model for how to help our most vulnerable youth return to the classroom and get back on track after a serious medical or psychiatric illness and separation from school." Cynthia Price, Executive Director, Brookline Community Mental Health Center.

Teens who are struggling with major mental illness or substance abuse are frequently sent back to school before they stabilize. Anguished and vulnerable, they can have great difficulty functioning in school, which only adds to the chance of relapse. Their families, too, are often in crisis, and are frequently unable to navigate the maze of medical, mental health and substance abuse systems. To address this problem, the Brookline Community Mental Health Center and Brookline High School staff created the BRYT Program (Brookline Resillient Youth Team), which provides a specialized classroom, two social workers, academic tutoring, and a program coordinator who makes sure the needs of the teens and their families are being met.

BRYT program is funded by a four-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and local funders who, coordinated by the BCF, provide one-to-one matching funds for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant.