“Stephanie Lindholm’s usually happy boys were struggling. Her divorce from their father had been traumatic: not just the separation, but the turmoil and restraining orders that followed. The boys were scared, and acting out.
Stephanie’s oldest son, 8, struggled to stay on task and didn’t want to engage with family activities. Her kindergartner started to hit his brother, and to challenge Stephanie at every turn.
“It was so frustrating for me as a parent. I didn’t know how to help him, and I didn’t know how to help him process his emotions,” Stephanie said.
Stephanie’s sons attend Endeavor Elementary, one of the first schools in the Nampa School District to pioneer an in-school therapy partnership with Terry Reilly Health Services. The services have helped the boys with their behaviors, and their academics, Stephanie said.
“We can tell her what’s on our minds, tell her if we’re stressed or not,” Aydin Lindholm, now 10, said about his therapist. “I don’t have to be worried as much.”
Stephanie’s family, and many others in the Nampa School District, are benefiting from a partnership intended to make therapy more accessible for students, by providing the service at school.
Professional therapists see students at just over half of Nampa’s 24 campuses. Students don’t miss hours of class getting to their appointments, and parents don’t have to take time off work to get them there. Data suggests that students who access the therapy have better attendance, and fewer behavioral challenges, than they did before.
Counseling is one of the most common behavioral health supports that Idaho districts offer to students, according to a survey commissioned by the State Department of Education last year. Nampa’s model, which served as a pilot for the Blue Cross Foundation’s efforts to expand in-school therapy, offers insights into the benefits and challenges of partnering with outside agencies.
The partnership is free for the district, but it doesn’t come without effort. The collaboration has been stressed at times by therapist turnover. High demand means in-school providers often have waiting lists of students they don’t have time to see. And pandemic closures posed a new challenge when many students decided not to continue with teletherapy — even as national trends suggest they may have needed extra support.
Data suggests improvements in behavior, grades and absences
Whether students are dealing with traumatic events or processing changes like a parental divorce, they often need therapeutic help beyond the short visits to a school counselor, who deals with hundreds of students.
“Those little brains don’t know how to process what they’re feeling,” said West Middle School principal Chance Whitmore. “Having someone teach them the tools and the ability to work through it, gives them a chance to function on a day-to-day basis without being angry all the time, without being frustrated all the time, without acting out all the time.”
Trista Jackson used to lose sleep over students who needed intensive therapy, whose needs she didn’t have time to meet as the only school counselor for Endeavor’s 500 kids. Now she helps get those families in-school care through a partnership she helped establish.
Jackson helps teachers and families identify students who could benefit from on-site therapy with Terry Reilly counselor Megan Forster. Students attend appointments during the school day and Terry Reilly bills parents or insurance the same way it would for outside services. Forster works with teachers to schedule a convenient time for the children to leave class, and with a parent’s permission, she can talk with school staff about strategies that might help them in class.
Forster’s hallway office at Endeavor is strewn with books, toys and a green beanbag chair, the preferred perch of her elementary-aged clients.”
View the whole story here: https://www.idahoednews.org/features/mental-health-in-schools/nampas-in-school-therapy-partnerships-lead-to-measurable-success/