Our History

RUSH Initiative was founded in 2001 as an outgrowth of a faith based organization. Our core mission is to help stop the inergenerational poverty that infects our landscape. We began working originally with a school-based medical clinic in Graysville. We created a school-based therapy program at Brookville Elementary School in Jefferson County, recognizing that children need strategies to deal with the mental health problems found at the school.

Although the outcomes were good, without involving the family, we often felt we were treating symptoms rather than getting to the underlying causative agents.

RUSH took over the operation of the school based medical clinic, to which the therapy program was attached, and moved the whole program to Sumiton School, Walker County in 2003.

In 2006, the school based medical clinic and therapy program was closed. A free-standing medical clinic was opened in 2007, also in Sumiton, but closed in 2008 due to funding problems.

We discovered that the average poor child began kindergarten 18-24 months behind middle class children because their parents weren’t teaching them skills necessary to start school prepared. To address this issue, RUSH started a family literacy preschool program called Hippy in Sumiton, which was later expanded throughout Walker County, into West Jefferson County, and in Birmingham (Woodlawn).

Because Hippy did not address the overwhelming mental health issues seen among these families living in poverty, or include discipline and behavioral issues, RUSH started a new program called First Teachers@home in 2007.