School counselors and social workers will staff an after-school mental health clinic in Kansas City. Schools in Paterson, New Jersey, have established crisis intervention teams to identify pupils in distress. “Care teams” have been set up on Chicago’s 500-plus schools to assist students who are failing academically.

Schools around the United States are taking advantage of a government coronavirus relief fund windfall to quickly enhance their capacity to manage kids’ mental health issues.

Many students returned to school this autumn for the first time since the coronavirus epidemic struck, and absenteeism, behavioral concerns, and subtler indicators of discomfort have emphasized the urgency of the problem for school systems.

Some school districts have been able to expand their efforts to help pupils cope with trauma thanks to the funding. Several others have started new programs to screen and counsel kids. It is clear that public schools are now more than ever at the core of efforts to improve the well-being of pupils.

In the last recession, “this conversation wasn’t happening,” said Amanda Fitzgerald, the associate director of the American School Counselor Association. A new focus on pupils’ well-being has taken hold in schools throughout the country.

Children’s mental health has been declared a national emergency by three major pediatric groups last month. Using the distribution of relief funds as an opportunity to reassess how schools serve students with mental health issues has been cited by the US Education Department (ED). Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has stated that the recovery from the epidemic must be built on a basis of mental well-being.

Schools will receive $190 billion in relief from the pandemic, which is more than four times what the Education Department spends on K-12 schools each year. Wellness screenings, staff training, and social-emotional learning curriculum have all received mental health funding.

Still, there are issues about how schools will be able to extend the benefits of the money, deal with privacy concerns, and track the efficiency of their efforts. As a school psychologist in Nevada and a member of the state’s education board, Katie Dockweiler has concerns about the implementation.

It was her opinion that “not all programs are created equal.” “It all boils down to how each individual school decides to implement it. There’s also a lot of variation there.”

There must be a mechanism to measure the impact on pupils, she said: “Otherwise, we’re just wasting our money.”

Mental health specialists have been a primary priority for many school districts. According to policy director Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, the National Association of School Psychologists surveyed its members this fall and found that more than half of districts planned to hire social workers, psychologists, or counselors.

Paterson schools received $9.5 million in federal relief funds and outside grant money to add five behavioral analysts, two substance abuse coordinators, and teams to identify pupils in crisis.

School Superintendent Eileen Shafer noted that many of Paterson’s 25,000 kids already suffered food poverty and struggled after family members lost their jobs during the flu pandemic.

“We wanted to make sure that we can deal with where our children are right now based on what they’ve been through before we try to teach anything new,” she said.

To aid children who are experiencing anxiety and panic attacks, the district of Ellicottville in upstate New York wants to use rescue funding to hire a counselor who can connect them with mental health services. However, no one has shown an interest in the role.

School Principal Erich Ploetz of Ellicottville High School says he has seen an increase in pupils telling him they are “completely overwhelmed” and don’t know how to deal with it.

It’s hardly the only area where the need to hire has outstripped the supply of qualified candidates. Some districts are using outside vendors to fill mental health positions, while others are training their own employees.

For the new after-school clinic, the Kansas City, Kansas, school district is utilizing some of the $918,000 in mental health assistance funds to compensate social workers and counselors already on staff. Mental health checks have also been added to the district’s roster of services.

Since the pandemic began, Angela Dunn, who heads the 23,000-student district’s mental health and suicide prevention activities, says the mental health team has responded to 27 student deaths and 16 staff deaths. There were a few deaths from COVID-19, but the most were homicides, suicides, and overdoses, according to her account.

It has generated worries about privacy as schools are now monitoring pupils’ computers for distress signals or conducting mental health examinations for all students. However, the assumption that schools should not be involved at all has faded away over time.

As Dunn put it, “We basically understood that adolescents are comfortable seeking help in a school atmosphere.

Using $24 million of its $2.6 billion stimulus funding, Chicago’s third-largest school district developed a “healing plan” for pupils.

Over the next three years, the district plans to increase the number of “care teams” — staff members who work to help difficult students — on every site. By the end of the year, we want to have reached 200 schools.

As a result of that money, high school Principal Angélica Altamirano set up a room with comfortable furnishings and a secondhand air hockey table. There are already programs for students whose loved ones have died and for professors who are struggling with a burnout at the campus center.

A sensory room at Quincy Elementary in Topeka, Kansas, which received $100,000 in funding, contains relaxing materials and staff. It is possible for teachers to send dissatisfied kids to the Roadrunner Room when they put their heads down on the desk or roam around the hallway and cry. There, youngsters can play with sand, build with Legos, or put together a puzzle in a tent with a weighted blanket.

At least one student uses this area as a safe location to vent their grievances, according to Andrea Keck, dean of students.

“She can journal it, get her hair put up, whatever she needs, and when she is successful the rest of the day,” said Keck, who is in charge of the classroom.

A $34 million mental health plan in Detroit includes evaluating pupils, extending mental health services from outside clinicians, and providing additional assistance to parents.

Meditation sessions for parents were held at a neighborhood coffee shop on a recent Wednesday. Some attendees expressed concern that their stress was impacting their children’s learning abilities.

It was Sharlonda Buckman, an assistant superintendent who attended the seminar, who said: “As a community, we have all been through something.” For us to be there for our children, we need to do a little bit of recovery work in places like this.”