When children need mental health support, getting connected to the right care can be a long and difficult process. A Child’s Light is working to make that support more accessible by connecting children with specialized therapists within days, rather than leaving families to navigate months-long waitlists and financial barriers.
The Chester County nonprofit has developed a rapid-response model that connects children and families with private, licensed therapists who agree to work on a sliding scale. A Child’s Light funds and pre-pays for a child’s first 12 therapy sessions, helping remove financial barriers to care.
“My initial vision was simple: I wanted to build a rapid-response model that bypasses the broken county waitlists of several months,” said Leslie Holt, founder and executive director of A Child’s Light. “By building a dedicated network of private, licensed therapists who agree to work on a sliding scale, and by pre-paying for a child’s first 12 therapy sessions upfront, we could completely remove financial and systemic barriers.”
The model is designed to help children begin specialized care in as little as five days. A Child’s Light currently works with more than 100 private therapists.
Building a Network
A Child’s Light became operational in 2019, just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic brought much of the world to a standstill. The organization had no established therapist network and had to build its operations almost entirely remotely.
“Our launch came with an unexpected trial by fire,” Holt said. “We became operational in 2019, just two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world.”
Holt began reaching out to private-practice therapists to establish the organization’s provider network.
“The primary operational bottleneck was that we started with absolutely no therapists in our network,” she said. “Building a reliable provider group meant making hundreds of cold calls to private-practice therapists, pitching our mission, and asking them to partner with us on a sliding scale.”
The organization’s model was designed to make participation easier for clinicians. By offering a sliding-scale arrangement and pre-paying for sessions, A Child’s Light reduced the financial burden for therapists who wanted to support children and families.
Beyond its therapist network, the organization has developed relationships with schools, law enforcement and community organizations that can help families find support. Initiatives such as “Coffee with a Cop” have helped create relationships with local officers and establish referral pathways.
Children do not always have the words to explain what they are experiencing. Emotional distress can instead emerge through changes in behavior, including aggression, self-harm or extreme isolation. By helping adults recognize those signals, A Child’s Light hopes to connect children with support sooner.
New Approaches to Care
Holt believes traditional healthcare and public funding systems can make it difficult for children to receive timely and sustained mental health support.
“At A Child’s Light, we see ourselves not as opponents to these systems, but as an essential, proactive partner designed to bridge these gaps and innovate models that can eventually strengthen public health pathways,” Holt said.
The organization is also testing new approaches to care. One example is Strong Bodies, Calm Minds, a somatic movement program developed by A Child’s Light.
The program combines physical play, movement and therapeutic reflection to help children develop self-regulation and emotional awareness. A four-week pilot program was completed in August 2026, with plans to explore expansion to additional communities.
The organization has maintained a deliberately lean structure as it grows. A Child’s Light currently operates with one full-time employee, one part-time staff member and an active volunteer board.
“Scaling for us does not mean building a top-heavy bureaucracy,” Holt said. “It means leveraging smart automation, streamlining caseworker routing, and modernizing our client tracking infrastructure.”
Measuring Impact
A Child’s Light tracks clinical and operational measures to understand its impact. The organization monitors therapy sessions funded, average cost per session, children waiting for services and the communities reached.
According to A Child’s Light, the organization has helped more than 250 local children move from crisis toward resilience, funded more than 3,000 professional therapy sessions and invested nearly $900,000 directly into frontline mental health services through 2026.
Holt also looks at milestones such as returning to regular school attendance, establishing healthier sleeping patterns and caregivers becoming better equipped to support a child.
“Ultimately, our approach ensures that data collection never comes at the expense of a child’s safety or dignity,” Holt said. “We completely anonymize all reporting, stripping away identifying details so that a donor can clearly see the trajectory of healing, while the child’s privacy remains completely protected.”
Expanding Beyond Chester County
A Child’s Light is now looking beyond its original community with an ambition to develop a model that can eventually be replicated across the country. Beyond Chester County, the organization has expanded into Montgomery County through partnerships with private clinical practices such as coeo Therapy. It is also seeing momentum in Delaware County through civic support from DelcoGives, alongside funding from The Demos Family Foundation, The Roemer Foundation and The Bloom Foundation.
The organization is seeking additional funding, providers and strategic advisors to support its next stage of growth.
“We are seeking multi-year capacity funding from venture philanthropists and foundations to expand our core operational team, streamline caseworker routing, and double our overall child placement capacity,” Holt said.
A Child’s Light is also recruiting specialized and bilingual practitioners, particularly Spanish-fluent providers, while seeking healthcare, education and legal leaders who can help establish referral partnerships.
For Holt, the long-term vision extends beyond providing individual therapy sessions. It is about creating a model for earlier intervention that can reach children before challenges become more deeply entrenched.
“Own your ‘Why’ and do not apologize for the weight of your mission,” Holt said. “In the beginning, you will worry about making people uncomfortable by talking openly about severe childhood challenges, but your lived experience and your transparent truth are your greatest assets.”
Her philosophy is captured by a quote from Desmond Tutu that has become a guiding principle for her work:
“We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”
For A Child’s Light, going upstream means making specialized support easier to access, intervening earlier and developing new models that could help more children build healthier futures.