The $100,000 Cortland County has allocated from federal COVID-recovery grants has recouped some spending on mental-health care in schools, but still doesn’t solve the problem, a health agency executive said Thursday.
About $100,000 in American Rescue Plan funds were made available recently to Family and Children’s Counseling Services for the school-based clinics, even though county legislators approved the spending months ago.
“It was very important but even though we approved it, it took a while to get the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted,” said Legislator Sandra Price (D-Harford, Virgil), chairwoman of the Health and Human Services Committee.
But the money hasn’t helped beyond recouping costs from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Lisa Hoeschele, executive director of Family and Children’s Counseling of Cortland County. Many schools in Cortland County have mental health clinics, but no staff.
"Due to the unexpected nature of being quarantined, many children did not have adequate resources, social contact with peers, or a learning-home environment, which led to a heightened sense of loneliness, distress, anger, and boredom — causing an increase in negative psychological outcomes," said Nicole Granteed, a counselor at McGraw Elementary School.
Danielle Gillotti, a school-based program director for Cortland and Broome counties for Family and Children’s Counseling Services, said she hears from many parents trying to access services for their children and having no luck.
“They've been looking for anyone. They thought they got on a waiting list, but no one ever called them back,” Gillotti said. “As a clinician, that breaks my heart. There’s no help to even respond.”
McGraw school officials have taken matters into their own hands, district officials said. They incorporated social emotional learning lessons in the classroom and trained a third of the instructional faculty and staff over the summer in therapeutic crisis-intervention techniques.
"McGraw will be spending a portion of the ARP funding provided for an additional school psychologist,” Superintendent Melinda McCool said. It now has two full-time psychologists and added a third school counselor last year.
She met with Family & Children’s Counseling Services to find ways to attract job candidates for mental health support. “If collaboration with the County or Family & Children's Counseling Services does not provide us with additional family counseling options in the near future, we will look elsewhere for this support for our school community," McCool said.
Normally, Gillotti employs eight people in school-based mental health clinics in Cortland County. By Oct. 3, she’ll have three.
“We used to have a family counselor right at our school to provide long-term counseling for those students and their families who needed it, however the past two years we have not had that support,” Guaranteed said.
Meanwhile, mental health needs for students have increased 350% since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Hoeschele said
“We’re seeing much more anxiety among kids,” she said. “We’re seeing a much higher suicidal ideation amongst kids right now. We’re seeing a lot of kids with trauma, not just as a result of COVID, but across the board with family issues. The mental health landscape for children is very, very fraught.”
The pandemic complicated the agency’s ability to be paid for its services, Hoeschele said. Telehealth appointments have a minimum time limit before the agency can bill – keeping a child on the line that long can be a challenge. Sometimes, just finding where the child was based is difficult
“We were providing services free of charge but we got no funding from the county,” Hoeschele said. “We have gotten no funding from this county since 2010. And yet we continue to provide services at vastly increasing costs, both in mental health and addictions. This county funds nothing.”
City Editor Kevin Conlon contributed to this report.
