Lebanon Special School District adds mental health resource
Dec. 16—The Lebanon Special School District is implementing additional mental health resources for its students.
"There is a crisis in mental health resources," Lebanon Special School District Assistant Director Becky Kegley said. "They're just not available. We have students and families who have been in need — and we do have both Centerstone and Stars in our schools — but it's just not enough."
The district announced a partnership with Care Solace, a company that will help connect students, parents and school district employees with mental health resources in the area.
There were so many students in need of mental health resources in the Lebanon Special School district that the schools were forced to create a waiting list.
"We had families asking for help, so we sought this out as an opportunity, because it's so time-consuming (to seek out mental health resources)," Kegley said. "When you call in to (make) a doctor's appointment and you're put on hold, and then you've got to get a referral from another doctor, that's just overwhelming. Basically what (Care Solace) does is take care of all of that for you."
Care Solace is a vendor that helps coordinate services for families.
"Let's say you were a parent," Kegley said. "You could go online, reach out to them. They'll start asking you questions, and they'll find a resource for you that takes your insurance. They'll go as far as making that appointment for you."
The service helps save hours of time for parents, especially ones who may have trouble navigating mental health and medical assistance.
"It makes it easy for them," Kegley said. "The service is good for family members, for our employees and of course for our students. Our students don't normally go in and seek out assistance. Usually, it's an administrator or a school counselor who sees a need, (or) it's a need we can't meet, or a parent has requested some assistance.
That's when what's called a "warm hand-off" is done.
"We care enough about our students that our school support teams are now set up to hand off a student or family in need to professionals who have the skills and training to find assistance in a very short period of time," Lebanon Special School District Director of Schools Brian Hutto said in a press release.
Kegley said that the partnership is going well so far.
"We did kind of a soft rollout with our employees," Kegley said. "We gave it out to them. We gave it to our counselors and to our administrators to start the warm hand-off process. Now, we've really started pushing it out to where our families know it's there and can access it."
The service will cost the district $16,000 a year. That price includes access for all students, their families, and district employees.
"Our families are so appreciative that we can help them and make things easier for them," Kegley said. "We've had some that have reflected back since we've gotten this underway for them, and they've said how easy the process was, how they had tried to get appointments (before), and it was going to be months before they could get in to see someone."
