An initiative at several New Brunswick high schools is making progress giving students access to mental health care.
Much has been made about the lack of resources for mental health, especially for teens, but St. Stephen High is working to reverse that and become a model for other schools across the country.
The initiative began six years ago in a handful of schools in New Brunswick’s Charlotte County and the Acadian Peninsula. Weekly meetings are held where teachers can share any concerns about a student being at risk, with the goal of intervening as soon as possible.
“This is a unique program that did not exist in its current formation anywhere else in Canada,” says Heidi Fitzgerald with Mental Health and Addictions Services. “We can bring people together more quickly, more often, and with less disruption to their educational curriculum.”
The program, called Integrated Service Delivery, helps bring together the departments of education, health, justice and social development.
“Some communities are very isolated here and that was sometimes very difficult for families to come directly to the office and make those appointments,” says clinical social worker Angela Keetch. “Students are seeing us regularly, we're in their classrooms regularly. I think it helps to break down some of those barriers when they recognize, ‘Hey, that's Angela, she was just in the hallway, she was in my classroom yesterday, I know I can talk to her.’”
In Charlotte County alone, the program is providing direct service to 450 students.
“They are the ones who are going to be noticing whether a child is having emotional behavioral difficulties in the classroom setting, or whether they’re struggling with some of the relationships with their peers or teachers,” says Fitzgerald. “Students have self-referred and that is a big shift from 10 years ago when I was working at Addictions and Mental Health, we rarely got self-referrals from high school students.”
The program was expanded to the Saint John area this fall, and its success has brought a plan to go province-wide by 2018.
Other provinces are also looking into the program to see it can work where they are.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Nick Moore.
