At Achieve Career Preparatory Academy, Jonna Hicks and Lamar Rice hold private counseling sessions, drive tardy students to school, observe peer interactions in classes, eat lunch with students, collect progress reports and report cards, run assemblies on issues like dating violence, pick up work and submit medical forms for absent students, and attend IEP meetings and parent-teacher conferences.
There isn’t much that Ms. Hicks and Mr. Rice, both case managers with Caregiver Grove, a Toledo-based behavioral health service provider, don’t do.
“Some kids have sport coaches. This is like having a life coach,” said Achieve School Leader Julieta Flowers. “Kids in today’s society need somebody to talk to and work through their frustrations with.”
VIDEO: Chass Rice of Caregiver Grove
This year, Caregiver Grove started providing in-school counseling at Achieve, STAR Academy of Toledo, and REACH Academy, all Toledo charter schools. On June 1, the company expanded into a new office on the second floor of the Frederick Douglass Community Association in central Toledo and launched a summer version of its holistic behavioral health program, enrolling 20 Toledo kids — with ambitions of expanding.
Each morning, an employee drives a van all over Toledo to pick up most of the 20 participants, who are ages 8 to 17 and must have a qualifying behavioral health condition to enroll. Frederick Douglass provides breakfast, and the kids split into two groups to discuss themes including anger management, depression and anxiety, social skills, and expressing emotions.
“The younger kids are testing boundaries,” said Ashley Reichlin, Caregiver Grove’s youth services clinical manager, who runs the summer program along with three case managers and a social worker. “We’re providing structure, but we’re allowing them to be free.”
In many ways, the program, which runs from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, is like summer camp. The participants work on art projects, play sports outdoors and in the Frederick Douglass gym, and take field trips to Metroparks and the Toledo Zoo.
These activities double as opportunities to build social and emotional skills. For some kids, a game of basketball is an opportunity to work on anger management, Miss Reichlin said; for others, it’s a chance to work on being more assertive.
Caregiver Grove’s summer program is not the only one of its kind in Toledo, though it’s uniquely well-positioned to tap into Frederick Douglass’ resources and connect with its members. It fits into an ongoing effort by both charter schools and Toledo Public Schools to shift away from suspensions and toward wraparound services that emphasize intervention rather than exclusion, in the face of high suspension rates within TPS that disproportionately target black students.
All TPS schools have at least one part-time counselor and a school psychologist, said Jim Gault, director of curriculum and instruction, and about 30 TPS schools have partnerships with one of five behavioral health service providers: RFS TACKLE, the Zepf Center, A Renewed Mind, Unison Health, or Harbor.
In addition, half of TPS’ elementary schools have alternative suspension programs that provide behavioral or mental health services, Mr. Gault said. This year, TPS focused on reforming discipline policies at a group of 10 elementary schools the district called the “Transformational Ten,” and out-of-school suspension rates at those schools dropped 40 percent.
TPS runs several summer behavioral health programs, which Mr. Gault said are important for students.
“Not only are you talking about behavioral health and mental health, but you’re also talking about summer slide,” he said. “Schools should still be providing services to promote the whole child.”
Contact Mark Rosenberg at mrosenberg@theblade.com or 419-724-6194.
First Published July 1, 2018, 8:04 p.m.
