At Herzl School of Excellence, a Chicago Public Schools elementary school on Douglas Boulevard in Chicago, there’s a focus on a specific kind of learning, learning to share feelings.
Tracie Blackwell is a professional school counselor with an additional certification in “Youth Mental Health First Aid.”
“Anything that can enhance the help or the support that I can offer our students, that's why I did it,” Blackwell said.
The certification is offered by the non-profit, Communities In Schools of Chicago.
“The CDC just came out with a new study recently and they said 90% of Americans think that the United States is in a mental health crisis. So you can't get more stark than that,” said Bart St. John, chief innovation officer for Communities In Schools of Chicago.
Kids are in crisis too, according to Blackwell, who sees it in the children who attend Herzl.
“The trauma that they’re experiencing, the deaths and things of that nature, depression, suicide, so we are seeing a lot of it,” Blackwell said.
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That’s why Blackwell completed the Youth Mental Health First Aid training this fall, along with several school deans and security staff.
“They have eyes on our students all day, at all times. So they can see when students are maybe experiencing or changing from one extreme to the next,” Blackwell said.
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The half-day training program gives adults the tools to take action.
“They have like an initial set of steps, just like somebody who knows CPR does, to get the initial aid that the young person needs, to help them along in their recovery,” St. John said.
Youth Mental Health First Aid is part of a broad range of tailored supports that CIS of Chicago and its network of community partners provides to students and families from 238 Chicago Public Schools, but the Youth Mental Health First Aid training isn’t just for schools.
Any adult can sign up for public sessions offered monthly by Communities in Schools of Chicago. You can find upcoming sessions here.
Special sessions can be arranged for other organizations as well.
“Companies can come to us, organizations, if they want to do a special training for Youth Mental Health First Aid, we can accommodate them that way,” St. John said.
In addition to training staff, Herzl works with community partners to offer additional support services including individualized check in sessions and brings in facilitators to hold talking circles for referred students.
“We want to offer anything that could support our students when they're having a mental health challenge,” Blackwell said. “You don't really want somebody to slip through the cracks. So the more eyes and ears, the more people that we have trained and able to give that first level, that level of support because they're certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid, the better.”
