School districts with high levels of poverty that lack counselors, social workers, and psychologists will now be able to recruit and hire more mental health professionals under a grant program offered by the state.

The push by state officials to address the shortage of mental health professionals in schools, and to increase the diversity among those professionals, is part of the latest effort to fund solutions to the ongoing youth mental health crisis. Some of those potential solutions, and the state funds to pay for them, are included in Gov. Phil Murphy’s $53.1 billion proposed budget that lawmakers are now reviewing.

The grant program is being run by the state Department of Education and is separate from the state’s proposed regional “hub-and-spoke” model that is currently being developed by the Department of Children and Families, according to Jason Butkowski, a spokesman for that department.

The regional model, known as the New Jersey Statewide Student Support Service Network, aims to provide mental health services to more students throughout the state and is intended to connect students to mental health services statewide, according to Butkowski. The grant program from the Department of Education and the regional model being developed by the Department of Children and Families will likely be complementary to each other, Butkowski said, and will be operating at the same time.

In October, the state announced its plan for the regional mental health services model, which will create 15 “hubs” or centers, in the state. The original proposal was designed to replace the current school-based youth services programs by June 30. The current service model has existed in 90 schools throughout the state since the late 1980s. After pushback from advocates, school officials, and state lawmakers, state officials said in November that they would continue to fund the school-based youth services program while building out the “hub-and-spoke” model.

Last month, the state announced the health care organizations that will staff and run the 15 regional hubs. The state has proposed staffing the hubs with three to 10 licensed clinicians per region.

“This is an administration that was going to destroy the school-based youth services program … at the same time they were trying to set up this other program,” Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), a member of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, said. “So that right there screams incompetent to me. So I just don’t have a lot of faith that the folks in charge really know what they’re doing.”

Read the full article about mental health counseling in schools by Bobby Brier at Chalkbeat.