National Grant Funding Will Support Mental Health Services for Thousands of Washington Students
Reductions in anxiety and depression. Reductions in the use of cannabis, alcohol, and nicotine. Reductions in interactions with disciplinary systems. Increases in school engagement.
These are just some of the outcomes that the schools within Educational Service District (ESD) 105 has experienced because of a grant project to connect students with behavioral health supports. Hope Baker, Student Assistance Program Manager at ESD 105, said the goal is to eliminate barriers that students may face when they need to access services.
“We want to dismantle anything that stands in their way so they can get what they need to live their best life,” she said.
ESD 105, ESD 112, and Spokane Public Schools have been awarded nearly $4 million in a four-year grant from the nation’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). For this iteration of the grant, the recipients will build on existing partnerships with state and regional agencies to increase awareness of behavioral health issues, increase access to integrated school-based behavioral health services, and implement policies that further support the healthy social-emotional development of students.
There are nine ESDs across Washington state, all tasked with providing regional coordination of services and supports to the schools within their regions. ESD 105 is based in Yakima and ESD 112 is based in Vancouver.
In the previous iteration of the grant, awarded for the years 2020–25, ESD 105 became licensed as a treatment organization by Washington State’s Department of Health. This allows the ESD to provide treatment services to students in their schools.
Treatment services include prevention of substance use disorders, early interventions for mental health and substance use disorders, screening, assessments, outpatient treatments such as counseling, and referrals. Baker said ESD 105 has nearly tripled its number of staff that provides treatment services to students.
“We’re bringing a lot more care to a lot more kids,” Baker said.
ESD 112 and Spokane Public Schools are also licensed to provide mental health treatment to students. In this newest iteration of the grant, active for the years 2023–26, the grantees will advance their school-based mental health support systems by embedding therapists into the school system. The project will serve nearly 24,000 students and their families each year.
In this service delivery model, the healthcare system and the public education system share the goal of serving young people, said Chris Moore, Mental Health Program Manager for ESD 105.
“What we want is for kids to be successful in their life after school,” he said. “I think that’s really where both systems can combine together.”
While ESD 105 has made progress in building up its behavioral health supports, the grant funding remains critically important because of the needs of the populations it serves. ESD 105 is comprised of 25 school districts in south central Washington, a mostly rural region where it can be a challenge for students to access services.
“It takes longer for any services to come out to rural communities, just because there’s not somewhere close for them to come from,” Baker said.
According to Healthy Youth Survey data from 2021, 36–42% of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students in ESD 105 reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the year prior. At least 1 in 6 students reported that they had considered attempting suicide in the year prior.
“There’s a lot more need than we have the ability to address,” Moore said.
Part of ESD 105’s work to support students’ mental health needs includes addressing the stigma surrounding mental health. That stigma, Moore said, tends to be generational, with young people having a better understanding of mental health than the adults in their families in some cases.
In response, ESD 105 has been overseeing community coalitions that partner with businesses and schools to offer education about mental health and other health topics to families and communities.
“A lot of our work has been with adults,” Moore said. “We’re working on [having them] hear more voices of the kids we’ve worked with,” as well as discussing mental wellness instead of just mental illness.
Other work that ESD 105 has done for this project includes suicide prevention programming and partnering with Heritage University to create a Master of Social Work program that places graduate students in schools.
As ESD 105 continues to focus on students’ behavioral health in this newest iteration of its grant project, Baker and Moore agreed that their goals are to sustain their service delivery model in the long term so that there could be behavioral health providers in every school in the region.
As Moore said, the goal is that “every kid that needs services can get access to it — doesn’t matter if it’s in the community or in school.”
For more information
· Students in Three Washington Districts to Receive More Robust Mental Health Supports (OSPI Blog, October 2020)
This story was written by Chelsea Embree, Director of Publications and Engagement Strategy at OSPI. You can contact the Communications Team at commteam@k12.wa.us.
