RICHMOND, Va. -- ChildSavers, a nonprofit that offers school-based therapy services for students in Richmond, Hopewell, and Colonial Heights public schools, says it saw a 20% increase in the number of children needing support between 2022 and 2023, with a growing number of students being placed on waitlists for school-based help.
"We see really high levels of anxiety, really high levels of grief, we see a lot of high levels of depression," said Bob Nickles, Director of Mental Health Services at ChildSavers.
Nickles said leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual school systems were not reporting accurate data on the number of students either utilizing or in need of mental health services, referring them to "invisible years."
The spike in reported cases of students needing services came when the pandemic put a spotlight on mental health.
"We're not in a better place. We're actually in a worse place," Nickles said. "As much as I want to say, yes, we're doing better at flagging and assessing, the systems of care are much more stressed than they used to be."
In Richmond Public Schools, ChildSavers clinicians are based at 15 different school sites and serve almost 400 students. As of right now, every site has a waitlist of children dealing with an array of mental health needs.
“We have definitely continued to see anxiety, sadness, depression, just kind of a slow-grow in general coping skills, that children have just needed some extra help fortifying their resources, their internal resources to cope with what’s going on," said Angela Jones, Director of Culture, Climate and Student Services for RPS.
Jones said the need has always been there, even before the COVID-19 pandemic when more students nationwide were in need of services for issues with anxiety, depression, and isolation.
"The honest truth is that we were experiencing that before. I think COVID-19 just kind of elevated it and allowed the space for us to talk about it more honestly and openly and actually provided ways for us to navigate funds to that source so that we were able to build those resorces, particularly with our schools," Jones said.
Nickles in most cases, families go through their school and ChildSavers' in-school clinicians because they have no other options.
"A lot of folks say there aren't other places that will work with me," Nickles said.
Though ChildSavers does take insurance, uninsured or underinsured families can still get services.
Nickles said the strain on staff in mental health and public education has only worsened since the pandemic, another factor contributing to higher caseloads.
"We see that in terms of staffing, it's hard to recruit. We see it in terms of turnover, not just at ChildSavers, but at all of our school partners. I think it's not surprising Virginia seems to see way more teachers retiring every year than we see teachers graduating from training programs," Nickles said.
Both he and Jones said there's been a push to advocate for more public funding to go toward mental health resources and staff in public school settings.
"A lot comes down to funding, and every single public dollar has about 100 different people pulling at it in different directions. Finding mutal interests and finding better ways to pull down federal dollars into Virginia goes a long way."
"We can talk about test scores and literacy and all of those things, but if we're not all collected, together, none of it matters," Jones said.
ChildSavers is encouraging parents who think their child may benefit from their services to call their school counselor or ChildSavers directly.
ChildSavers does have an Immediate Response Helpline at 804-305-2420 that you can call at any time to help children who are experiencing immediate trauma. The team can meet with you within 30 miles of their Richmond office.
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