Alabama schools were just starting a new venture to help students find mental health resources when COVID hit.

Mental health service coordinators are now in place in nearly all of Alabama’s 138 school districts; they help smooth the path so more students can find resources. The new role came at a key time, officials say, and will help more communities wrestle with the best way to help more students.

“We know firsthand of several situations where, had some people not been in place, we would have lost several children,” said Kay Warfield, of the Alabama Department of Education, who directs the coordinators from the state level.

Schools around the country are trying to staff up counselors and therapists, but experts say Alabama’s creation of a bridge role could be a model. Mental health service coordinators set up mental health awareness events, hold small group sessions with students, and connect families with professional mental health services.

“It’s not a competition. We have to collaborate,” said Emily Herring, a mental health service coordinator in Fairfield, a small district in the Birmingham metro area, of partnering with colleagues to help students find services.

“Someone who is focused on customizing and coordinating supports to better meet students’ evolving needs is an important function,” said Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center for Johns Hopkins University’s School of Education.

“Too often districts and schools fall back on a one size fits all approach,” he said, for example, assigning every school a counselor or a social worker. “But some schools may need this, and some other schools may need different types of student supports, and what schools need in the fall might be different from what they need in the spring.”

Read the full article about mental health investments by Trisha Powell Crain at The Hechinger Report.