Fewer than half of public schools—48 percent—report they can meet students’ mental health needs, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Kids today face daily challenges to their mental health - challenges like social media comparison and online bullying, the lingering effects of the pandemic, exposure to drugs and alcohol, poverty, and difficulty, or even abuse, at home. It's not just kids living in underserved neighborhoods - 42% of all students report feeling persistently sad or hopeless and nearly one-third experience poor mental health.
Our kids need mental health support to learn, grow, and thrive. But with schools understaffed and overburdened, who steps in to make sure they get the care they need?
That’s a question we began asking a long time ago at the Juvenile Protective Association (JPA). And we’ve been working hard for over a century to provide solutions - much needed social-emotional and mental health care and support for kids, their parents and teachers.
We partner with dozens of schools in Chicago supporting children, educators and parents. Our model is cost effective, coming in at about half the cost a school would pay if it hired its own counselor and without the drawbacks: We hire, we train, we support and we evaluate our therapists so schools can focus on academics. We work in collaboration with our schools so they are in the know at all times.
The impact has been significant. In schools where our programs are in place, we’ve seen 78% improvement across social, emotional, and mental health markers in students.
The mental health care crisis doesn’t just affect students. It’s also taking a toll on their teachers. 60% of K-12 leaders cite mental health as their top safety concern. That’s why JPA launched Connect 2 Kids (C2K) in 2020. C2K gives teachers the tools they need to better understand their interactions with students, improving student behavior and reducing teacher stress. Teachers in our program meet with a counselor (a trained mental health specialist) once a week to talk about classroom challenges, cultivate empathy for themselves and the students in their care, and develop support plans. Our consultants also conduct classroom observations, noting important teacher strengths as well as possible areas for attention. In collaboration with teachers, we identify specific topics for classroom group programming aimed at meeting the social emotional needs of students.
One of our passionate beliefs at JPA is that there’s a strong, vibrant, and talented human inside every child. In the face of a rapidly evolving school mental health crisis, it takes creativity, tenacity, and teamwork to make sure Chicago’s kids have the support they need to become who they are meant to be. When kids, and the adults who surround them, have the tools they need to create healthy, supported relationships, they learn more, achieve more, and have brighter futures.
We believe every child in Chicago deserves nothing less.
