NASW Social Work Talks - EP102: Children's Mental Health in Decline

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

American children's mental health is worsening. Young people and their families are dealing with the emotional impact of inflation, social injustice, mass violence, and grief related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, we talk about the problematic decline in children's mental health in the United States, and what social workers can do to help. Our guests are Gary Pettengell, co-founder and CEO of ECINS (Empowering Communities with Integrated Network Systems) and Kimberly Matias, LCSW, a school social worker in the Providence (Rhode Island) public school district. Visit the show notes page for related resources.

Welcome to Social Work Talks. My name is Greg Wright. The mental health of our students has been suffering lately. So we're having a conversation with Kimberly Mathias, who is a social worker in schools, and also Gary Pettingale, who is the CEO and founder of eSense about a new report on the state of mental health of school students. So welcome to Social Work Talks podcast, Kimberly and Gary. Thank you. Hi. Yeah. So before we like launch this, I wanted to get an idea of who you are. Kimberly, if you could give us a description of how you actually started out

as a social worker and also where are you? And then after that, if we could talk to Gary a bit about Eason and its work. Perfect. Sure. So my name is Kimberly Matias. I'm a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Rhode Island. My journey in school social work in the school social work field began in 2016. I was a mentor for at-risk youth and as well as a behavior specialist in an inpatient unit in Rhode Island. In between that time, I also volunteered as a therapist for undocumented and uninsured adults and also worked as a hospital social worker for some time. In 2019, I started my journey in school social work and have been a part of Providence Public School District for a little over two years now. I'm currently a certified

youth mental health first aid trainer and have advanced training in cbt motivational interviewing dbt family therapy solution focused interventions and trauma-informed care wow a lot gary yes so um yes so again gary i'm the ceo at uh essence we well we've been sort of doing our field of work so it's getting towards a quarter century now 25 years uh we operate in the u.s in the uk and australia primarily in in the u.s we're focusing on student support and case management uh and so we're pleased so you know with the school social work association of america we're the only one endorsed by them in in that field and we're helping them to achieve their goal of trying to standardize best practice of school social work across America. Yes so there

is a new survey out and it's entitled the state of mental health correct or is it a longer title tell me that. Yeah no that's yeah that that's that would be the title yeah. Yeah so I was wondering um exactly what was a motivation for this uh survey it was it was trying to get an understanding of the the true extent of the problem and there's a lot of as i'm sure everybody knows that there's a lot of facts and figures out there so it wasn't really a case of reinventing the wheel we just really wanted to reach out to school social workers and counselors and professionals in the field to really get an idea of you know their understanding they're working you know on the ground and their perceptions and that understanding of the issue yes so um the like

findings were that over um eight percent of the uh students are like saying that their mental like health worsened lately um i was wondering at all if you were surprised by that finding so yeah it's always a it's always a shock um and yeah and it is it is surprising when it when you when you read it i think i think the real value for us from the survey it was and for us as an organization it was actually hearing it or you know firsthand from a large number of professionals yeah yeah so um exactly um how large was our survey size um um how many uh schools or social workers were actually contacted for this so we it was towards 400 which was you know it's a it's a reasonable it was a good spread across you know all the states in the U.S. so you know we were

pleased with that spread and number. Kimberly you are a social worker you're out there on the front lines what are you seeing is the situation a lot worse? Yes. Exactly what's up? So I started school social work in schools in January 2019 as I had stated before and that was just a couple of months right before the pandemic kind of took over and everything kind of shut down. And it was hard for me trying to figure out in that moment how I was supposed to be at home with my children and also try to support over 800 students in my school, which I was the only school social worker at the time, and, you know, be effective at my job, especially at a time where COVID-19 brought so much anxiety and so much fear around this virus the amount of like grief and

loss as well as the increase in depression and anxiety and abuse and suicide risk was very draining and children finished one year virtually and they started the next as well virtually so it was very stressful and confusing and just a really hard time for everyone. I think everybody was feeling it, teachers, staff, everyone alike was just trying to figure out how to be in the moment of so much confusion and uncertainty. But once school were allowed to open again, many had hopes that things would just go back to normal. And unfortunately, that has not been the case. So the number of students' social work referrals had more than tripled within the first month of us returning to school. And since then, fast forward to today, it's been what, about maybe three years

since the pandemic started or so. And we're still trying to get through those referrals and still trying to make sure we see our students and that we check in. There's been such an increase in mental health services and crisis in our school and everywhere in general, but it's really hard to catch up on those referrals and I've noticed new students struggling with things they never struggled before right like so many students lost family members they they have some type of trauma you know for many students school is a safe space and they were home stuck for so long without that safe space or some students I know I can see from experience like what school would be the place they would come eat you know and we were forced to not have that anymore so all that was kind of

just taken away and and now they return and and we're seeing so many increase increases and just things that we hadn't seen before or that were not so um intense i would say um and yes so so um i was like like wondering what are those like things that you like haven't seen before that are now more um evident as far as the mental health of uh yeah so for me i think uh social anxiety is one of the really big ones um the kids being separated from from being in person with so many people like i can speak for a lot of our uh fifth graders that went on to middle school and now they were supposed to have six different classes and all this stuff happening and um all in all around in general like social anxiety has been one of the biggest increases we've seen

again grief um suicide risk uh the the the abuse and things that kids were were exposed to and and families having loss of income um ptsd trauma all around in general not that it wasn't a thing before but it has definitely increased in size since covid happened yeah so um you are the only like social worker for 800 students is like that right yes because yeah that's um like interesting because um our standards for uh school social work actually call for at least one per 250 so that's yeah a staffing shortage that's um a big one so we've a lot of folks we've noticed the shortage and and like um they pull us in different directions sometimes in the district to go cover at different schools because we just don't have it.

And I think there's a lot of things that come into play as to why there's so little social workers available or in the field in schools. But for sure, I mean, we're trying to pass the bill on Rhode Island right now. Today is actually, they're at the courthouse trying to get the bill passed so that we do have 250, one social worker for every 250 students,

which would make our lives so much easier. It's still a lot of students, but we're hoping that gets passed because it's just such a disadvantage for our students. And for us, the burnout is so huge. So we're hoping that that does get passed and that the importance of having school social workers or social workers in general in mental health gets seen

and the demand is there. So we're hoping that maybe the wage increases or whatever properly that they have to do to make sure that these jobs are taken and that we can retain the social workers Because it's great that we can have one for every 250, but are the job positions actually being filled due to that lack of resources or the lack of pay or whatever the case may be that why those jobs are not getting filled? Gary, Eason's, you have a mission to actually use data in order to like solve issues like this. So I was wondering, after looking at the, like, survey, what are some solutions to all of this?

I mean, there is a shortage of social workers. There is a demand that's just, like, extraordinary. So I was wondering if there was any, like, hope that eSense offered to all of this. Yeah, there's a couple of avenues, really. I mean, yeah, the data, the data there is important, but I think it's also enabling that collaborative work. And so, you know, there is a number of support mechanisms within the school. So you've got school social workers, you've got counsellors, you've got psychologists, you've got a number of people. So we, our aim is to enable them to work effectively together and again, to gather that evidence and that data in order to, as I was taking Kimberly's point,

you know if we can do this with one school social worker imagine what we could do if we had two or three and it and it goes on so it's yeah enabling that everyone to work together to capture that to that capture that data yeah so um another thing is that i think that the um survey had like said that um a solution might actually be um our technology so how can um our technology like help when there's a manpower shortage going on too i think it's streamlining processes it's automated processes it's um reducing the the administrative burden and i think it's pretty well established you know if you're trying to do all this on paper and spreadsheets it's very very very difficult it's time consuming even things even things of a student being referred in you

know if it's in a on a post-it note if it's a conversation in the corridor if it's an email coming in from parents or guardians if you can even make that an electronic process that sends out it automatically updates it sends notifications that saves a huge amount of time and that's just one element of identifying the student and then the work with the student when you can make that more efficient as well and so that's that's really how it can help so you it's a really it's overworked people like like kimberly here it's enabling to support more students and work more effectively the university of tennessee college of social work offers specialized certificate programs for graduate students and postgraduate professionals including an mss level

school social work licensure at our knoxville and nashville campuses and online no matter which program you choose, the UT College of Social Work provides quality, affordability, and flexibility to suit your needs. Learn more about these programs at www.csw.utk.edu slash talks. You and Kimberly have actually worked with each other before. I would like to know exactly what was that like project? How did that turn out? well kimberly's a it's a weird provider system into kimberly's school district i mean we we've met lots of times on teams in meetings we met at the swath conference in in denver and all those old-fashioned face-to-face meetings which was nice but that's so yeah kimberly's a user of

these things gotcha um how has it worked out for you though kimberly i mean has it made it like easier i mean i know that you want another social worker in there like helping but um has it been um a benefit having a bit of technology helping you yeah so um i can speak as we are a charter school even though i am a part of the providence school district so i had kind of um we had been brainstorming last year as to how we could make our process more streamlined so i think what we were looking for was a way to get rid of uh paper files because the storage was becoming a problem. There's a timeline when it comes to how long we need to keep files and all the above. So that was an issue. And also, like Gary had said, just being able to communicate

with everyone else on the team. So we have a student support team, which consists of administrative, counselors, psychologists, all the above, the mental health kind of team in the school. And as referrals come in, we were using a user-friendly system that was out there already, But there was a lot of issues around confidentiality. And again, data pulling and being able to kind of just make a streamlined process so that we could all see when a student was referred, take ownership of that referral, whether it was, you know, put in our notes and privately, we all wanted to be able to enter confidential notes, but also be able to see, hey, you know, so and so was working on seeing the student already, or they were seen yesterday. So that that one then doesn't become the top priority. Right. Because we know they got some attention. And I think with the lack of the technology, we were having a really hard time trying to communicate those things. So students were either not getting seen or seen twice by different people or, you know, just it was becoming very confusing. So when we approached eSense, it was because we definitely wanted something to streamline our process.

And it's been very helpful. Like Gary said, we've been jumping on Zoom calls here and there and just trying to figure out, hey, like this is working, what can we do for this? And eSense has been great in that sense of, you know, being able to tailor that system specifically towards everything that we need and making our jobs just easier in that sense.

yes we still have only now we have two social workers but you know it's still only two for 800 students but at least the counselors are also pitching in and we can all kind of know hey you saw the student for this and I saw the student for this now we know there's two problems so when we go into our meetings we can bring all this data and also send things to students and families from this system which has been a game changer in general when it comes to school social work gary is um easton only working with uh school social workers or is it um a system that also um applies to other areas um of social work social work is um a diverse like thing there are veterans uh social workers uh school ones um private practice i mean it's over a lot of

different um areas so um is um easton's in like more than just say a school setting yes it is yeah so we we can work um in any setting so whether it's from you know um family issues could be domestic abuse issues homelessness really really and we've got a number of projects um across the u.s so it's not it's not just all social workers and counselors but it does work in other settings as well uh kimberly so um our our pandemic is like easing so um i was wondering um at this point um are you more like hopeful that the uh mental like health of our students over time will improve i mean are you like seeing that or is there um a reason for a lot more concern going forward so um we've definitely seen the referrals kind of drop this year a little bit

which has been great. I think families are, you know, being able to go back to work and do these kind of go back into routine as best as they could. I don't see it going back to baseline pre-pandemic anytime soon. There's just so many after effects of the pandemic that we still need to address and kind of come to acceptance with when it comes to our students and families. So definitely feel like it's getting better, but still so much work to be done in the area yeah so um i've actually read that um our schools like socialize our children like being um around like others socializes them and that um a lot of kids being um isolated for a few years have uh actually missed out on that and it's really made them a whole lot less of um a mature

person and um i was wondering um are you like seeing that yes yes for sure we're also seeing like the increase in behaviors and I think it has to do with a lot of it has to do with the fact that they were not given class instruction for face-to-face for so long and so teachers were just trying to figure out how they can provide work right but then they came back to school a whole other grade different and teachers start planning for that year and teaching things and these a lot of these students were like whoa like I'm not there right and so that easing back pretty much didn't happen. They were just thrown back in. And I think that now the increase in behaviors is because students don't really get the work or they're not understanding it because, so to speak,

they missed, you know, a very important year. So I definitely feel like that is huge. And it has been, we have seen that a lot in the school. A final question. I'm wondering whether either of you has a closing thought? I feel hopeful. I think that, you know, there's a lot more awareness on mental health now since the pandemic. So many grants that I've seen that are being provided now to help students with mental health services and all other mental health agencies and things of that sort. I think the importance of integrating behavioral health has been huge in the last few years. So I'm very hopeful. I think what I would want is for the stigma to continue to decrease around mental health. There's always this stigma of people scared or afraid or

maybe embarrassed to even say, hey, something's wrong with me and I should seek that help. So I'm hoping with time and now that mental health is being so put out there that people feel less ashamed to seek help and that we can in that way reduce the instances of, you know, suicide and homicide and things of that sort, because it's so important, right? We talk about going every year to get a physical, to check our bodies or blood work. But our brains are, if not more important, right? Because if we're not feeling okay, if our mental health is not okay, how are we supposed to feel good in any other aspect in life? So I feel the day that we begin to push mental health, just as we push a yearly physical, that day, we will be much better off

when it comes to mental health in general. I think it's so important. And I feel like, you know, for a long time has been hidden or people have been signaled out as crazy. Anytime they say something's wrong with me or I'm depressed or something, and people are just like, you're fine, get over it right but this is real and and we live through this and mental health is so important and and it's so real and i think that we're getting better and i'm hopeful for it and and we have a long way to go but you know um with everything that's happening right now i feel like it has come to a streamline and we're focusing more on it and that is all that we could really ask for right now gary um in your closing thoughts um i was wondering if you're like hopeful that um

our technology might help us here i mean um is there a way to marry our minds with um our technology because a lot of folks are looking at um ai as like a threat um our technology but you're saying that it might offer solutions here yeah i think on kimberly's point i mean i think that mental health is definitely being spoken about more i mean i mean i'm in meetings day in day out with with certainly within with school districts and it's encouraging that it's taken so seriously they're talking about it i mean we've done some work around mental health screening tools um self-assessments um and taking on i mean the the fact the figures show that you know students are like significantly more likely to fill in a an electronic assessment where they

do on their phones on a tablet um as opposed to paper it makes it makes it easier so and then it's taking that data to look at what works what isn't working and i think that's that's the thing so it's providing the technology so more students can be supported um and and the school social workers for example to make their life easier to provide that support and then looking at that data And really taking on like the school's Rebecca Oliver's vision from SWAR is to then promote that best best practice. But in order to do that, the data helps in order to go, look, we've been doing this and this is providing a positive student journey mapping. Well, let's replicate that in as many districts as we can. Thank you, Kimberly. Gary, thank you for being our guest on Social Work Talks.

And I hope to hear from you in future. You have been listening to NASW Social Work Talks, a production of the National Association of Social Workers. We encourage you to visit NASW's website for more information about our efforts to enhance the professional growth and development of our members, to create and maintain professional standards, and to advance sound social policies. You can learn more at www.socialworkers.org.

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