Why this, why now, why you.

1. The problem

When a child is struggling, the path to help usually runs through a psychological evaluation and then therapy. Both are hard to reach. Evaluations are expensive and often only partly covered, if at all. Waitlists run months. Many providers do not accept Medicaid or offer sliding-scale fees, and families are left to figure out a confusing system on their own while the stress builds at home. The families with the fewest resources wait the longest, and what goes unaddressed in one generation becomes the starting point for the next.

The Foundation's plain-language guide to the barriers explains this in more depth, with sources.

2. What Carry Good Forward exists to change

Carry Good Forward Foundation is a Central Texas charitable foundation founded by a licensed psychologist on a simple belief: healing is not only personal, it is generational. Its purpose is to expand access to mental health care, especially psychological testing and psychotherapy, for people and families facing barriers to care. Better Minds Strengthen Communities.

3. Current program

Mental Health Access has three parts:

• Caregiver workshops. Free psychoeducation sessions for parents and caregivers, led by licensed clinicians, on childhood anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and stress at home, in English and Spanish, hosted at partner schools and community sites.
• Bilingual resource kits. Guides distributed through schools, pediatric clinics, and community organizations covering warning signs, how to ask for help, local low-cost providers, and crisis lines.
• Care navigation. One-on-one help for families to understand options, prepare for appointments, and connect to affordable evaluation and treatment, including, as funding allows, reduced-cost psychological evaluations for children whose families cannot otherwise afford them.

4. How donations are used

Gifts fund the program above: clinician facilitator time for workshops and navigation, printing and distribution of bilingual guides, community outreach, navigation materials, and, as funds allow, reducing the cost of evaluations and treatment. The Foundation works through partner sites rather than its own facilities to keep overhead low. Gifts are processed by Givebutter; the Foundation never handles card details. See Transparency for how funds are governed.

5. Who can benefit

Families in Central Texas, beginning in the Round Rock area north of Austin, for whom cost or confusion about the system is standing between them and care, for a child, a teen, or an adult. Families formed through adoption, foster care, kinship care, or guardianship are expressly welcome. No referral or diagnosis is needed to ask. Assistance depends on available funding and partner capacity and is never guaranteed.

6. Results

The Foundation is at the beginning of its work and does not yet have program results to report. It will not publish estimates in place of results. It tracks caregivers attending workshops, kits distributed, families receiving navigation, families connected to evaluation or treatment, and caregiver knowledge and confidence before and after workshops, and will publish totals on Impact as programs are delivered, without identifying any family.

7. Leadership and accountability

Founded by Dr. Monika Diaz, a licensed psychologist, and governed by a volunteer Board of Directors (boardofdirectors@carrygoodforward.com). Carry Good Forward Foundation (EIN 42-5143538) is the charitable foundation of Amlea Behavioral Healthcare; the two are distinct entities, and gifts to the Foundation are not payment for Amlea's services. Legal, status, and financial information is available on request and is published on Transparency as it becomes available.