UICOMP’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine is teaming up with area organizations to help students and families in need.
By Jim Burwitz
When Kevin Curtin took the job as principal of Peoria’s Garfield Primary School in 1999, he thought he was ready for anything.
“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” Curtin admits. “I was the sixth principal at the grade school in six years. The families were 95 percent low income. Mobility rate was approaching 70 percent. I underestimated the intensity of the problem.”
Though Garfield has made great strides in the last 10 years, crime, poverty, and violence have taken their toll on students and families. Besides the obvious physical concerns, teachers and counselors struggle to address serious emotional and mental health issues.
“We have eight-year-old students with incarcerated parents, which means we see lots of fear, anxiety, anger, and frustration,” Curtin explains. “We have to build a sense of connection. We need to develop support groups for these children. We need fulltime counseling for parents and community members. Our two social workers can’t keep up with our needs.”
The answers might be found in a new quality-improvement study led by UICOMP’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine.
How The Pieces Fit
Chris Bruell has served the College of Medicine as Coordinator of Student Counseling and Clinic Services since 2000. As a career educator and licensed social worker, she knows how crime and poverty can impact a student’s ability to learn.
“Before I came to Peoria, I worked in New York doing outpatient mental health,” she says. “Living and working with homeless children taught me that education is the door out of poverty.”
Earlier this year, Bruell and her colleagues in Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine teamed up with the Community Builders Foundation to direct a detailed study of primary and mental health services in three local schools. UICOMP and Community Builders are working with Methodist Medical Center of Illinois, United Way, the Center for Prevention of Abuse, Children’s Home, and other area organizations to determine the quality and effectiveness of services offered to Garfield Primary School, Trewyn Middle School, and Peoria Manual High School. The project is funded by a grant from the Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation.
“We’re looking at what programs and services are available and trying to connect the pieces,” says Jim Bateman, who serves as board president for Community Builders. “We need to identify gaps in resources and needs to transform our inner city socially, spiritually, and economically.”
Under the leadership of Community Builders, lead agency for Peoria Full Service Community Schools, an outline was created to research issues such as identification of major barriers to access of services, existing systems with potential for growth, data collection and evaluation, communications processes, and successful models in similar communities. The goal of the study is to determine how services are currently being provided and create a plan of recommendations for improved coordination and integration. The results will be shared with Peoria School District 150 as it moves forward with new community schools.
“Local and regional experts will be interviewed to gather insight and ideas to best provide primary and mental health services to our local school children,” says Bruell. “Target interviews will collect data from key persons within several provider-based organizations to identify areas of potential concern, relative weakness, or underutilization.”
In addition to working with local agencies such as the Mental Health Association of Illinois Valley and Counseling and Family Services, the investigators plan to conduct focus groups with students, parents, teachers, and administrators. The community-based study will conclude in December of 2009.
“We’re excited to be working on this project,” says Dean Steiner, Director of Behavioral Health Sciences at Methodist Medical Center of Illinois. “This will provide meaningful information as we look at various components of the school-based health programs.”
Children Are The Focus
What are the best-case results for the three-school initiative?
“We want every child who needs mental health services to receive those services,” Bateman says. “We are a very mission-oriented group. Our focus is on the children.”
The final report will provide an overview of findings as well as recommendations for the advancement of team goals within a specific timeframe. This includes eliminating barriers, developing processes for ongoing data collection, and identifying successful programs and procedures.
“The concept of a full service community school is based on the idea that schools can produce academic literacy only when students are ready and able to learn,” Bruell notes. “Crime, violence, poverty, substance abuse, and mental health issues interfere with a student’s ability to meet educational goals. A full service school dissolves the distinction between school and community and eliminates gaps in family support services.”
It is that notion of combining school and community that drives Kevin Curtin. Since joining Garfield Primary School a decade ago, he’s seen the difference that teamwork can make. Partnerships with Methodist Medical Center of Illinois, the Peoria Park District, Prairie State Legal Services, and Workforce Network have led to innovative programs for students and parents. The ongoing mental health study is an extension of that philosophy.
“The vision is to turn things around and make Garfield the community’s school, not just a school in this community,” Curtin begins. “We’re serving our children in a whole new way. We’re reaching out to parents, churches, neighborhood associations, and businesses. We’re chipping away at our problems one at a time. These partnerships will help our kids get whatever services they need. We have to become a consistent presence so our students know we’re not going anywhere.”
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