Increase Student & Caregiver Connection

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Strategies to Increase Student and Caregiver Connection to the School

Steering Committee

August 26, 2021

I hope that the transition back to school for you and your students has been a smooth one. While we have all spent the summer planning for the return to school, now that some of us have a few days, or weeks, under our belts, we may have a better idea of what the needs are for students and their families. We anticipate that there have been some hiccups and some room for learning as we all attempt to re-establish routines and a sense of normalcy.

We all know that our student’s mental health had already been suffering prior to the pandemic and have now seen the exacerbation of these needs by the pandemic. Information from the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) informs us that one in every five teens has, or will develop a mental illness, and that half of these cases will develop prior to age 14. Those are sobering statistics for us to process in a typical year, but this year we know the needs will be even greater! So how can we meet those needs? How do we begin to address them?

Strategies for Support

  1. Opportunities for Artistic Expression
  2. Student Support Groups
  3. Connection with the Community

Providing opportunities for your students to process their experiences of this past year through artistic expression is one way to help your student re-connect with each other and the school. When students express themselves through meaning-making and other creative methods, the impact improves community wellness, connectivity, and helps to reduce individual depression and anxiety (Stuckey & Nobel, 2010; Clift, 2012).

Finding ways to insert creative expression in schools and community programs helps enhance the experiences of youth and young adults as well as strengthen the school and community.

The forms of artistic expression can vary, depending on the school and community it can be anything from a drawing/painting workshop, a writing contest, creation of a magazine, a photography project, or a dramatic play. In Maine, in 2013, Youth MOVE Maine put together a statewide project using photography and written word to hear about the experiences of youth, which culminated in a magazine of photos and stories called IDentity. They even created a toolkit that you can access that will help you develop your own project! The toolkit is free and available for public use. The toolkit includes instructions, agendas, and templates to share the Identity project with youth either in-person or virtually.

The next strategy is providing support groups where students have an opportunity to share their stories and help each other along the way. For students, groups can present an opportunity to learn about self, identify personal strengths, and set and achieve goals (Bruhn, 2014). For administrators, groups can provide a low-cost, high reward academic and social-emotional intervention to help meet the abundance of mental health needs in our communities after a year of COVID-19 anxieties and shutdowns (Ghosh et al, 2020).

Student support groups can be educational, where an educator leads the group by helping to re-teach a particular topic. A student support group can also be psychoeducational, whereby a mental health professional helps students obtain information and build skills for difficult situations through education-based techniques. Still another type of group is enriching in nature, where the educator instructs students in a specific skill that gives them opportunity for self-improvement or perhaps to help/teach others with their newly acquired skill(s). The staff at the DMCC is available to assist with the formation of student groups through many of our programs.

School-Community Mental Health Partnership

The mental and behavioral health of students is a necessary focus of education. Thus, connecting your school or district to community-based partners in health and mental health is imperative to building effective school-community partnerships to support school mental health. Approximately 75 to 80 percent of children and youth in need of mental health services do not receive them. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001) Of those who do receive assistance, the vast majority (70% to 80%) receive mental health services in schools. (Farmer, Burns, Philip, Angold, & Costello, 2003; Rones & Hoagwood, 2000)

Further, youth are six times more likely to complete evidence-based treatment when offered in schools than in community settings. (Jaycox et al., 2010) As such, schools are often considered the natural and best setting for comprehensive prevention and early intervention services for all students, including those with and without identified educational disabilities. (Anglin, 2003, NASP, 2015)

We know that access to school-based mental health services increases positive student outcomes such as physical and psychological safety, academic performance, and social-emotional competence; while decreasing negative outcomes such as disciplinary referrals, substance use, and involvement in the criminal justice system. There is no one size fits all approach to an effective school-community mental health partnership. Each partnership should be developed based on the specific needs of the local community. Again, the DMCC is here to help you meet the needs of your students and their families.

We look forward to working with you in the coming weeks and months to ensure your students have the support they need to bounce back from last year’s challenges and have a successful new school year!