As families prepare for children to return to class, a recent national survey found nearly 80% of parents believe schools should provide an employed mental health professional at their school.
"A large percentage also think that there should be a school counselor who's available every day to speak with kids one on one," said Rob Bisceglie, executive officer and president at Action for Health Kids, an organization that commissioned a series of surveys, in partnership with the CDC Foundation.
The Parent and Child Mental Health Survey asked more than 1,000 parents and caregivers what worries them about their child’s health.
Some findings from the survey include:
• Nearly two-thirds of parents want training to better understand and support their child’s mental health and well-being.
• Nearly 70% of parents indicated their child feels safe and supported at school when there is at least one trusted adult they can talk to.
• The biggest obstacle for kids getting help with mental health at school, according to parents, is the child themself thinking they do not need it.
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Best practices to help parents navigate their concerns are now at parents' fingertips with a new website, www.confidentconnections.org, which takes a "Say, Do, Learn" approach.
"There's educational materials on the site. There's also materials to help with prompts. How do you talk to your kids about a variety of issues? And then there are things for families to do together to engage in those kinds of conversations," Bisceglie said.
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"Our main task was to kind of translate the survey data into really actionable accessible resources for parents based on the things that they said that they needed," said Anais Murphy, LMWS, MA, and senior manager at Action for Healthy Kids.
Murphy helped write some of the resources, including age-based prompts to encourage after school conversations to get kids to open up about their day.
"We have a resource called 'Ages and Stages,' which I'm really excited about. That one does kind of a deep dive into the social-emotional milestones and markers at every developmental age," said Murphy.
Containing guides to help parents talk to their kids about various topics, from social media to suicide, the website is a resource for parents who don’t know how to begin those conversations.
"Their anxiety is being raised because of hearing that there's a youth mental health crisis and they need tools to be able to allay some of their anxiety," Murphy said.
You can find more information at www.confidentconnections.org.
