Hanover School Division expanding mental health programs in response to post-COVID challenges – SteinbachOnline.com

The Hanover School Division is implementing a number of new programs following a noticeable increase in mental health issues since COVID. 

That’s according to Rod Kehler, Assistant Superintendent of Student Services. He says training current staff is an important step in handling these challenges. 

“We’ve got the two-day PD workshop that’s primarily for many of our administrators, our school clinicians, our learning support teachers, our school guidance counsellors and that is the ASIST training which stands for Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training.” 

Kehler says the goal of ASIST is to ensure staff feel confident and are able to support students who are struggling.  

He adds, “we also have a three-hour PD that helps individuals in spotting the warning signs for suicide and then helping those persons. That’s called Safe Talk and that will be for many of our more peripheral staff. Our hope is to extend that out to educational assistance, even classroom teachers, school bus drivers, maintenance, and secretaries.” 

In addition, Kehler says the HSD has implemented a number of supports that will help students before the ASIST or Safe Talk training is needed.  

He notes “that would include the board’s commitment to providing additional social workers, which they did last year. They also provided funds for the family liaison workers, we’ve got our enhanced mental health and addictions program, which is our partnership with Southern Health, and we’ve got the SRSS health clinic, we’ve got trained trauma teams for our school division, so lots going on in this area.” 

One of the latest programs to be implemented is called Bridges. Kehler says this is an alternative learning program to help students who have very poor attendance, many of which are struggling with mental health challenges. He notes it focuses on project-based learning and offers flexible hours and volunteer credits. 

Kehler says the division has partnered with Youth for Christ and is running Bridges out of Backstage. 

“Their building is relatively vacant during the days and so this is a great off-site location for us, it’s a great environment for kids. We’ve got one and a half teachers there and then a youth support worker that is currently working there with a small number of students.” 

At the moment, Kehler says there are eight students participating in the program.

“They’re still connected to their home schools, so they’re still getting some of their assignments from their home schools, but this offers our staff to provide program support and then also trying to get credits in some more unique ways, whether it be volunteering, job credits and maybe some other kind of course work that might not be offered in their current high school.” 

Though the program has only been running since the end of October, Kehler says they are already seeing the benefits.  

“These are students that would have been traditionally completely disengaged from school. Schools would have been reaching out to them, they would have had severe or chronic absenteeism, and we’ve seen great gains in these students attending and actually starting to apply themselves.” 

Kehler says these types of mental health supports are integral to a good education. 

“For students to thrive in an educational setting, we really need to have all of their needs met. It’s difficult for us to expect them to be focused and attentive in class if they’re not being fed and they’re hungry or if they are struggling with anxiety. Those types of needs need to be met before we can really think about expecting them to apply.” 

Finally, Kehler thanks all of the division’s partners that have been incredibly supportive. 

“Whether it be Southern Health, Shared Health, Youth for Christ, we’ve received lots of support from our neighboring partners, I should also include the RCMP in this, they’ve been extremely supportive, so it’s really nice when you’ve got all of these agencies working together for kids.”