Mental health care is available to students in their schools in the Washington School District. The district has again partnered with Grace C. Mae Advocate Center to provide in-house counseling for kindergarten through 12th grade students. Curriculum Director Veta Thode and Samantha Brinning helped to get the program started locally two years ago and the school board recently approved continuing the program for the next school year. Thode says it can help with a variety of situations, “It varies student to student, there sometimes is a divorce in a family, a death of a family member, could be anxiety, it could be, there are so many things that can be addressed through this grant. They do an analysis of the student before they start working with them and determine what they need and they move forward with that.” In the most recent school year 39 students in the school district received services, along with 20 group sessions at the alternative high school WRAP Center.

Brinning says the cost of the services is low for families, and starts first with insurance, “However, if a parent is unable to pay their copay we do have funds available to help support that as well. If for some reason there is either not insurance, or the insurance doesn’t cover the counseling services, there are wrap-around funds in the community that we can tap into to cover that or the funds that we have set aside to support mental health can be used to cover those as well. Really the expense towards the family is minimal to non-existent in some cases.”

Students may be referred by school counselors or services can be requested by parents. Brinning said it can have a positive impact on behavior in the classroom and provides staff with strategies for certain students. An added bonus of having in-school appointments is less time away from classes. In addition, Thode says the district has a social-emotional learning curriculum selected to work with students beyond counseling.