Riverstone Community Services Programs

Essential Needs Assistance Program (ENAP)
Through this program, we provide direct payments to utility providers on behalf of individuals and families at risk of service termination. We also offer food, clothing, household items, and other essential goods. Additionally, we fund direct payments to mental health care providers for those who are uninsured or underinsured.

Kids Thrive Program (KTP)
Kids Thrive is the flagship program of Riverstone Community Services and the reason the Riverstone branch was created. The program provides a structured, dependable way to address the practical barriers that interfere with a student’s ability to learn, participate fully in school life, and remain consistently present in the classroom. Our work begins at the district level: we initiate contact with central office leadership, who identify two or more schools for partnership. From there, we coordinate directly with each school, working with Communities In Schools site coordinators when they are in place and with designated staff when they are not. Assistance is provided quarterly and supplemented as emerging needs arise. We also remain attentive to conditions on the ground; when a school’s needs are clear, we reach out proactively, offer support, and move forward without delay.

Support through Kids Thrive is tailored to the circumstances of each school and may include clothing, backpacks, school supplies, hygiene items, take-home food kits, holiday meal kits, attendance incentives, or sponsorship of field trips. This work complements the responsibilities schools already carry. Educators can fulfill their mission most effectively when students arrive prepared, present, and able to focus, and families benefit when practical needs are met without added strain. Kids Thrive strengthens that foundation by helping ensure more students come to school ready to learn, allowing schools to uphold their commitments to every child they serve.

Bed for Every Head (BFEH)
This program was established after an exploratory approach with an established national nonprofit stalled due to insufficient local volunteer involvement. WVSHI/RCS does not remain idle when a clear need exists. Our leadership and Board moved forward without hesitation, reaffirming our organizational ethos: when the need is real and within our reach, we act. Bed for Every Head was created to ensure that children do not wait for circumstances beyond their control before receiving something as fundamental as a safe place to sleep. We provide complete bed kits that include a bed frame, mattress (or mattress with box spring when necessary), pillow, and at least one full bedding set. Bassinets and cribs are available for infants, and the program serves children from infancy through high school.

During the program’s first twenty-nine days of operation, twelve beds were delivered across four counties. Over the initial 127 days, we provided twenty beds, two cribs, and one toddler bed in six counties. Additional placements were already underway as of January 2, 2026. A proper night’s sleep is essential to emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. No child should have to sleep on a couch or a floor. Through Bed for Every Head, WVSHI/RCS is ensuring that fewer children in West Virginia face that reality.

Operation COMPASS (In Development)
A future initiative under Riverstone’s umbrella, Operation COMPASS, Collaborative Outreach for Mobile Partnership, Access, Safety, and Support, will unite law enforcement and mental health professionals to improve responses to crises in the field. This program is currently under development.

WVSHI Inc. Programs

Project Dignity
Our flagship remembrance initiative. Project Dignity aims to restore, memorialize, and protect every former West Virginia state hospital cemetery and burial ground. This includes installing permanent signage and memorial stones, ensuring secure fencing, acquiring VA-issued markers for eligible veterans, and returning dignity to the forgotten. Our first effort focuses on the Weston State Hospital cemeteries. The existing dedication markers on the grounds provide only limited historical detail, leaving key dates and context absent from public view. Project Dignity’s planned memorial stones and interpretive signage address these gaps through precise, verifiable historical information. Following an initial state denial, we have temporarily paused implementation while preparing for the next stage of the authorization process to ensure the path forward is clear, fair, and properly documented. We remain fully committed to advancing this work. 

The Legacy Project
The core of WVSHI’s mission. This project began in 2021 as the “Legacy Package,” first created to help the great-granddaughter of Mary Wagner, a former patient at Weston State Hospital, uncover her family’s story. Since then, over 350 families have received these personalized presentations, which trace a loved one’s time in institutional care using original documents and research. In January 2024, the offering was officially renamed “The Legacy Project.” It remains one of our most sought-after programs, and each presentation includes a contribution from the requesting family that helps sustain this work and strengthens the mission-driven efforts of WVSHI/RCS. 

Burkhammer Memorial Scholarship (In Development)
This scholarship was established to honor Genevieve Burkhammer, a patient at Weston State Hospital whose daughter now serves on our Board. The Burkhammer Memorial Scholarship supports graduate counseling students and addresses one of the major barriers to completing mental health programs, cost. As funding expands, the scholarship will grow to include undergraduates in mental health fields. Our belief is simple: one student supported today becomes one more advocate for tomorrow.

The Forgotten Histories Project
This initiative covers all of our research, preservation, and advocacy efforts surrounding West Virginia’s former state hospitals. It includes public education, historical documentation, restoration of institutional records, and the eventual push to reform restrictive record access laws for descendants.
Our stance is simple: preservation is not performance. Not telling these stories only shields the systems that failed so many. This project ensures those systems are no longer protected by silence.