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ATHABASCA – Aspen View Public Schools trustees received a presentation at their June 15 meeting regarding the school division’s new mental health project, which the province is funding to the tune of $540,000 over the next two years.
Kim Carson, associate superintendent of human resources and student services, said all school divisions across Alberta had the opportunity to apply to the Mental Health in Schools Pilot Project, with Aspen View submitting its (ultimately successful) application in January.
The division’s $540,000 grant will be provided in two installments over the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.
Echoing a statement by Alberta Education, Carson said it is known that students who have positive mental health are more resilient, better able to learn and achieve success and build health relationships.
And given the important relationship between positive mental health and academic success, schools naturally play an important role in nurturing students’ mental health.
As part of the application process, Aspen View had to partner with one or more mental health service providers, and the division chose to team up with the Athabasca County Family and Community Support Services (FCSS).
However, Carson noted that this project isn’t aimed solely at helping students in Athabasca, but “it will be supporting all of our students across our entire division.”
The division then carried out a needs assessment and a scan of the division’s current mental health continuum of supports and services. FCSS also carried out a similar assessment of their own services.
In terms of identifying need for mental health supports, Carson said the division looked at metrics like referrals to school counsellors/student services consultants over a certain time period, data on student attendance, the population of self-identified Indigenous students within Aspen View and the number of Violent Threat Risk Assessments (VTRAs).
Carson said they did perceive a lack of access to mental health supports in both schools and communities, in part due to obstacles related to travel and virtual access.
On this point, she noted that there has been a shift in terms of mental health care to more virtual sessions.
“That’s great … for some people, but if you don’t have reliable Internet or if you don’t have access to technology, it’s very difficult to participate in a session,” she said.
She said they also observed increasing complexity of needs in school, which sometimes results in school teams managing more critical incidents at the expense of leaving less time for day-to-day aspects of mental health management.
They also observed a gap in social skills and emotional regulation as leftover effects of the pandemic, and the need to involve more Elders and Knowledge Keepers in delivering additional supports.
In terms of intended outcomes for Aspen View’s project, Carson said they want to increase awareness of digital safety and positive mental health for Grade 1-12 students, focus on staff and build their competency in certain mental health-related areas, increase family and community understanding of strategies to promote positive mental health, and increase student attendance.
She said they are also exploring the possibility of establishing a platform for anonymous reporting of students’ concerns around bullying or harassment, though they have to solve the obvious problem of how to consistently monitor it so that reports don’t go unnoticed for days on end.
So how to accomplish all of this? Carson said they will contract more Elders and Knowledge Keepers to work with indigenous students, employ an additional school counsellor/student services consultant, collaborate with FCSS to increase family engagement in activities related to digital citizenship and self-regulation and build relationship with other organizations outside of FCSS.
Board chair Candyce Nikipelo asked if the division was actually employing a new staff member. Carson clarified that this is an existing position that was only supposed to be temporary but will now remain in place over the next two years thanks to this funding.
As for measuring project performance, Carson said they will have staff, students and parents complete pre- and post-project surveys, collect data on community engagement sessions and monitor the frequency of student reports on the online platform (assuming it goes ahead).
Carson said they had an initial meeting with all the project stakeholders on June 12 and will have a follow-up meeting June 29.
The next step will likely be preparing that pre- survey over the month of July so that they can send it out to families in September or October.
“I think this is wonderful and I’m so excited we were able to receive the funds that we did,” trustee April Bauer commented at the end of the presentation. “I think that half a million dollars spread over two years is going to do amazing things for our rural division.”
Recalling a presentation she heard from the Kids’ Help Phone organization, she noted that more than half of the calls to that service are from kids who identify as LGBTQ2+, and wondered if there could be more done to support that community.
Trustee Dennis MacNeil added he hoped there was a plan to reach out to those kids who lacked proper Internet/electronic devices, as those kids may need help the most.
