INNISFAIL - A two-year pilot project aimed at enhancing mental health supports for students in public and Catholic schools across the region is going well and showing concrete progress, Chinook’s Edge School Division (CESD) trustees were told at the recent board meeting.
Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools (RDCRS), CESD and McMan Central Region announced in December that they were teaming up on the pilot project after receiving a $1.4 million provincial grant as part of ongoing efforts to expand mental health supports in Alberta K-12 schools.
The pilot will run until December 2024 and involves the hiring of five mental health consultants to provide direct support for students.
Marcie Perdue, CESD associate superintendent of student services, gave an update on the project to trustees on Feb. 1. In a follow-up Albertan interview, she outlined the progress of the project to date.
An Innisfail-based not-for-profit social service agency, McMan Central has provided three family enrichment workers for the project. Those workers are now in place and in contact with 18 families in Chinook’s Edge, she said.
“We have placed them throughout the division,” Perdue said. “They are on the ground running. They do intensive supports. We have a family school wellness worker program in our divisions but those family school wellness workers don’t go into homes, they don’t do intensive supports for families.
“These family enrichment workers will actually go into homes. They do parenting skills. They provide interventions. They support them with connecting with the family resource network. They will deal with shelter issues, drug issues in the family. Food issues. They have support around all of those issues.”
The COVID-19 pandemic brought to light needs in school communities, she said.
“We saw the needs with our students and then we also see the needs with our families. We are one of the only pilot projects that actually includes a family element in it,” she said.
The recruitment and training process for the five mental health consultant positions in the project has also now been completed, she said.
“We have done some training with them and they are now out in schools,” she said. “They do direct support for the students at the school. We just train them up and they are on the go.”
Having both school divisions working together is ground-breaking, with collaboration between CESD and RDCRS benefiting students by bringing together existing staff expertise, she said.
“What is interesting is that we are actually sharing staff,” she said. “We share so many communities. I think most school divisions would probably have taken the grant and divided it, but we decided that we wanted to support families together. I think it has a lot of promise.”
“We already have a strong connection with one another and we work in some of the same communities, so we are able to be innovative in designing how the work will look,” she said.
“Part of our approach will be sharing staff resources and expertise, which is not common among school divisions.”
Holly Bilton, CESD board chair, said, “We are so excited to collaborate with Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools and McMan Central. Together, we are confident this will assist us in serving the needs of students.”
Jodi Smith, RDCRS associate superintendent of inclusion, said the pilot project is allowing officials to “increase mental health resilience amongst students and families by continuing to offer learning opportunities in the areas of social-emotional learning (and helping) increase access to community mental health support and services for our most vulnerable students.”
Trustees seek student attendance information
In other news from the recent CESD meeting, trustees have instructed administration to bring back a report on student attendance.
“The board understands that good attendance is school impacts student success,” the division said in a news release. “The board also recognizes that, at times, there are planned student absences such as to participate in off campus work programs, that impact attendance.
“The board is interested in understanding attendance in Chinook’s Edge more deeply so it can ensure supports are in place. The superintendent will gather information and bring it back to the board.”
