Schools to get mental health experts

District plans to place mental health professional in each school

Willoughby-Eastlake Schools plans to place a mental health professional from Crossroads in each school starting in August.

According to Superintendent Steve Thompson, the district has had a long standing partnership with Crossroads, which provides behavioral health services, but the services were intermittent and not available to all students. Also, not all the school building had mental health services.

The services previously were available by referral only at the district. It was typically up the guidance counselor at the school to make the decision to refer a student or not.

The decision to bring a full-time mental health professional into each of the school buildings was a result of conversations the district was having with their building principals and teachers.

“Consistently, the number one concern from our staff has been that mental health is becoming more and more of an issue within our schools,”

Thompson said.

According to the superintendent, kids are dealing with anxiety issues and a plethora of other issues that really seem to be impacting the schools. Additionally he believes that there is some residual fall out from the opioid epidemic, causing issues to manifest in parents which is resulting in issues with the students.

“So, there are real issues and they (teachers and principals) said we if could do anything that (mental health) would be our number one thing that we would want to do,” Thompson said.

Eileen Bowers, director of Pupil Services, worked with Crossroads to find a way bring the mental health professionals into the schools and have them available on a consistent basis for the students. Additionally, according to Thompson, Bowers worked to have the current model used by the school changed so that the staff from Crossroads were no longer limited to seeing students only by referral. They would be able to take student walk-ins.

“This will be an asset especially when a student’s need is beyond what a guidance counselor is trained to do,” Thompson said. “Guidance counselors are very busy and they are not trained in mental health. So moving forward we will have a mental health professional in every building that will be to take walk-ins along with referrals.”

According to the superintendant, the district is excited about what that means for them.

Thompson noted that research tells them that there is nearly a 70-75 percent reduction of issues when there are mental health professionals available.

The funding for the addition of the mental health staff is coming from a reallocation of resources in the Special Education Department and grants from both Crossroads and The ADHAMS Board. Thompson was unable to say at the time of the interview the amount of the grants and said he was have to found that out from Bowers.

The grants will not cover the entire expense and the district will use $149,000 from the Special Education budget to pay the difference.

Thompson also noted that no positions were being eliminated and no programming is being cut to pay for the mental health professionals

“When you consider all the personnel and help that we are getting for our kids, that is pretty significant,” Thompson said. “And we are not increasing our overall budget, we are reallocating resources in our Special Ed. Department to cover that. There will be no increase to the general public.”