Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
Q&A
Mental health and support services in community schools
3:21:27
·
110 sec
Council Member Rita Joseph inquires about the effectiveness of CBO models for mental health support in community schools, particularly for vulnerable student populations. Flavia Puello-Perdomo from the DOE outlines the comprehensive approach to mental health and support services in community schools.
- Many community schools have mental health clinics embedded within the school infrastructure
- CBOs partnering with schools are required to provide or facilitate mental health services
- The approach includes addressing physical health needs, such as vision screenings and providing eyeglasses
- The focus is on meeting the whole child's needs, including mental and physical health, to improve engagement and attendance
Rita Joseph
3:21:27
I was coming to mental health, but thank you for that.
3:21:30
So how is community schools model assessing your the effectiveness effectiveness of CBO models around mental health and especially supporting our most vulnerable New Yorkers, right?
3:21:39
Like when you talk about our students in STH foster care, multi language students, multi language learners, and also our students with IEPs, how does that support?
Flavia Puello-Perdomo
3:21:49
Yes.
3:21:49
So part of what happens across of our community schools is that when we expand the community schools, many of them were also expanded with the creation of mental health clinics or clinics within the community schools.
3:22:01
So that was part of the effort.
3:22:03
And then for those one that don't have those clinic embedded into the school infrastructure, the CVO that we partner, that's part of our requirement in our contract.
3:22:12
They have to ensure that the contract that they have the capacity to either support mental health services or to hire additional providers.
3:22:21
And I think the whole concept here is that if we know that we're meeting the whole child needs, right, including mental health, physical health, kids are less likely to be absent and more likely to be engaged.
3:22:36
And I think that's where we see some of those other data some measures that I flagged.
3:22:41
So it's not like a one specific ingredient but it's all the components of all the things that we do collectively.
3:22:47
So a lot of it is our partnership with DOHMH, with the mental health team and the entire DOE school health support, but also ensuring that the providers have the capacity, prioritize that.
3:23:01
That also transferred to things like getting eye exam and eyeglasses.
3:23:06
So if you're in a community schools, you know that you're gonna get vision screening, that if you need glasses you're gonna get that and that's like why what we embedded in this initiative is really whole child, whole supports.