BONNYVILLE - Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) is partnering with the Bonnyville Primary Care Network (PCN) for the Pathways of Hope pilot project, an initiative designed to help youth navigate and access mental health services.
The program will see a million dollars in funding from Alberta Education’s Mental Health in Schools Grant going to the primary care network to hire a mental health navigator, a mental health nurse and two psychologists. The staff will work within schools across the division and families to ensure students receive mental health services.
Nicole Garner, the public relations, and communications manager with NLPS, said the project provides the school division with a pathway to access student supports that that aren’t available in schools. Normally, NLPS would refer parents to other agencies to access supports such as medical doctors, private mental health clinics, or community organizations, or provide them with advice on how to access them on their own. The new programming will allow for more personalized support and specific support.
Garner said the project will be starting in early February, adding that student advocacy counsellors have already begun to identify students and families who may benefit from the services that will be offered.
“Through this project, the team will be able to assist families in assessing what supports may be needed, provide information on how to access them, and possibly even directly refer them to someone who can help them,” Garner told Lakeland This Week. “It also brings those individuals into the schools to provide that support without the families having to go elsewhere. In addition, there will be a level of support provided to families over the summer when school is not in session.”
Garner continued by saying that improving mental health continues to be a priority for NLPS.
“Surveys done with our students indicate that many of them are experiencing anxiety on a regular basis,” she stated, adding that while the school division currently offers universal and targeted mental health supports to students, it does not offer or have access to Tier 3, or individualized supports. Individualized supports include one-on-one clinical counselling, as well as referrals to additional medical and mental health providers.
This is something NLPS has determined, through working with students, is needed to improve the mental health of some of its students. Additionally, Garner said, when NLPS conducted its parent mental health survey in the spring of 2022, many parents expressed that they had tried to access mental health supports for their children outside of the school and had difficulty accessing some of these supports.
“There were a variety of reasons, including those high-level mental health services not being available, cost, accessibility, long waiting lists, and travel making accessing the services difficult,” Garner explained. “For instance, parents were being referred to child psychiatric services to Grande Prairie.”
Karen Packard, NLPS board chair, said when discussing mental health with parents, the one thing that always comes up is the difficulty they have in accessing support for their children.
“Services either aren’t available locally, or they are only offered privately, and families can’t afford to pay, or they don’t have access to a family doctor to make a referral to a specialist,” she said.
Partnership planning
Regarding how the partnership between NLPS and the Bonnyville Primary Care Network was formed, Garner explained that one of the strategies in the school division’s mental health plan was to work with local agencies who are providing mental health services to students in a bid to explore ways to work together.
“Through that collaboration we had discussed ways to make things easier for parents to access services outside of school,” she said.
When the provincial government announced that it was accepting proposals for pilot projects, Garner said, NLPS approached the PCN about collaborating on a proposal that would address some of the issues school officials had identified.
“The Bonnyville PCN has a proven track record of innovative programming including the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Collaborative and The Hive; both supporting children and youth in one of our communities with mental health programming,” she said.
