Racine Collaborative Releases Recommendations For Addressing Children’s Mental Health Issues

Police, school officials and social services agencies in Racine have come up with recommendations for improving children’s mental health, in part so children with issues do better in school and stay out of jail.

For the past several years, police, school officials and social service providers in the Racine area have been talking about young people’s mental health, as part of the Racine Collaborative for Children’s Mental Health. Ashley Staeck, with the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread, is a member of the Collaborative.

“I think everybody saw the effects of unaddressed children’s mental health issues in different ways: Children (act) out in school, they act out in the community, they don’t perform well academically. And they do things that can hurt themselves or hurt others,” said Staeck.

The Collaborative came up with nine recommendations to improve children’s mental health. One is to expand school mental health services by bringing in outside counselors.

“A lot of times we hear that families can’t get to therapy appointments or to doctor’s appointments because of transportation issues, because of childcare issues, work demands — things like that. So bringing services to the school helps eliminate a lot of those (barriers),” she said.

Another suggested solution is to create a local hotline that parents could call any day, any time if they thought their child has mental health problems.

Nationally, it’s estimated 20 percent of children have a diagnosable mental disorder.