Kaiser Permanente gives local districts $25k to improve mental health services
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Kaiser Permanente announced an almost $200,000 grant for eight school districts in Colorado to help improve their mental health services.
Three of the districts receiving the grant are Colorado Springs District 11, Harrison District 2, and Fort Carson District 8.
Officials with Kaiser Permanente said the districts awarded grants have students and staff bearing the hardest impacts of the pandemic.
“We looked really closely at demographics," says Curtis Robbins, Strategic a and Relational Executive Manager with Kaiser Permanente. "We also looked at free and reduced meal rates, to see what just made the most sense."
Each district’s plan to improve their schools’ mental health services is different.
Kaiser said District 2 plans to use their funding to teach staff and students how to self-regulate their emotions.
Fountain-Fort Carson District 8 is using theirs to focus on trauma-informed care by training their teachers to discipline differently.
"That care asks, 'How do we shift the thinking, how do we say, what’s happened in this person’s life, rather than what’s wrong with you?'” said Robbins.
Officials with District 11 said their share of the pie will focus predominantly on staff emotional well-being, which took a hit when they shut down their schools just before Thanksgiving Break.
“We know it's very damaging for staff and students to go back and forth between remote and in-person,” says Devra Ashby, Chief Communications Officer for District 11. "It's turned the whole education force upside down".
District 11 students will return to in-person learning, at different capacities, by January 19th.
District officials hope staff seeing their students in-person will be medicine in itself.
“When you see a child catch on to something and have that ‘aha’ moment, it’s heartwarming," said Ashby "I know every educator misses that."
Each district has until the end of the spring 2021 semester to use their grant money.
