It is the second time Kelly has served in a governor’s cabinet; she was previously Secretary of the Commonwealth for Gov. Bob McDonnell.

But Kelly says her current job allows her to focus on the issues that keep her up at night, like the fentanyl epidemic and children’s mental health.

“57% of teen girls say that they're chronically hopeless or sad,” said Kelly. “Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10 to 14-year-olds in the United States. You have an entire generation of kids that to me seems depressed and anxious, the anxiety rates are through the roof…. And so now we're really ready to tackle the children's mental health side. But just to give you some idea of what a priority behavioral health has been in this administration, the governor has invested, alongside bipartisan effort in the General Assembly, $1.4 billion in this behavioral health transformation.”

Beck and Kelly also talked about Richmond’s recent water crisis, and what happened when she and her state colleagues learned just how bad the situation was.

“It was just mass chaos and stress,” said Kelly. “We get the call. Then about an hour later we get word that VCU might have to shut down. And that's really when like the like the repercussions started to dawn. So, at first it was like survival mode for, you know, kind of my own family, checking in with VDH, just figuring out what they knew, when they knew it, and what they were going to do. But then about an hour later it was go time. It was like, oh, the hospitals are gonna have to, people could really be hurt and suffer and possibly even die…. We were able to get a tanker diverted to VCU and ended up over that the course of that week, just like almost every day, we need a tanker here, we need a tanker here, we need a tanker at the VA hospital.”

And Kelly candidly discussed her decision to become an adoptive parent, which she says changed her life and opened her eyes to problems facing the foster care system.

“[We] just got a front row seat to the child welfare system and saw all the need and learned a lot,” said Kelly. “You know, we learned that Virginia at the time was 50th in permanency. We're now 47th, which means more kids age out of foster care at 18 without a family than almost any other state.”

A link to this latest episode of “Untold – A WTVR Podcast” can be found at the top of this page. You can also find us on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.

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