Annual Rhode Island Kids Count report shows worsening mental health, learning conditions

Rhode Island Kids Count will release its annual report Monday on the state of Rhode Island’s children, and for the second year the pandemic’s consequences are reflected in worsening mental health and learning conditions, the group says.

Each year the Providence-based nonprofit charts through data comparison the improvements and declines in the well-being of Rhode Island’s children — a population group now at 209,785, the group says, and trending downward.

“I think this data confirms what we were seeing last year,” said Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT. “The pandemic is continuing to have a significant impact on the well-being and safety of children in youth in many areas.”

Mental health being one.

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in March 2020, teen mental health was a growing concern, said Burke Bryant. Then as schools closed for distance learning and children were isolated at home, away from their peers and extracurricular activities, data shows their mental health worsened.

For instance, Bradley Hospital’s 24-hour hotline, called Kids Link Rhode Island, saw a doubling of calls between fiscal year 2019 and fiscal 2021 — from 4,849 to 9,702.

In 2021, 467 teenagers were admitted to a health care emergency center after a suicide attempt, compared to 334 in 2020. Three quarters of those attempting suicide were girls.

“We are also seeing a major increase in children and youth with mental health conditions whose families are having trouble accessing services due to a workforce crisis in community-based programs," Burke Bryant said.

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Difficulty accessing mental health care

In Rhode Island in 2020, about 33% of children ages 3 to 17 who needed mental health treatment or counseling had a problem obtaining needed care, Kids Count found.

The workforce crisis predates the pandemic. But the pandemic exasperated issues of low wages and reimbursement rates for community service agencies. The result has been too few workers to provide critical care, Kids Count says.

“It is cost effective,” the group says, “to invest in a seamless system of high-quality children’s behavioral health care rather than pay the much higher cost of crisis intervention."

The Kids Count data also reflects a drop in calls to the state’s child abuse hotline, which on the surface may seem like good news. In truth it could reflect the opposite.

In 2021 the hotline received 14,876 calls, down from 16,195 in 2020. In comparison, in 2019, before the pandemic, the hotline received 19,401 calls.

The decline likely doesn’t reflect a drop in abuse, Burke Bryant said, but rather a decline in the reporting of abuse.

“Because children and youth were not with other caring adults in their lives — coaches, music teachers, drama instructors — those kinds of caring adults would possibly notice abuse and neglect and report it, there were fewer reports,” she said.

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Chronic absenteeism

During the 2020-2021 school year, student groups with the highest levels of chronic absence were also hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some 22% of all Rhode Island children in grades K-3 were chronically absent. Meanwhile 47% of Rhode Island’s low-income middle and high school students were chronically absent that school year compared with 21% of higher-income students.

Kids Count found that 16% of Rhode Island children were living under the poverty level, defined as a family of three making $21,831 or less a year. That was 1% less than last year.

Two thirds of those children live in the four cities: Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls and Woonsocket.

Said Burke Bryant: "Now that we are turning the curve on the pandemic, we need to ensure that long-term supports are in place that will yield the best outcomes for Rhode Island’s children and families, particularly the most vulnerable who were hardest hit by the pandemic and the resulting economic impact."

Email Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Pandemic has worsened RI children's mental health and learning