{"id":3331,"date":"2024-05-30T10:13:51","date_gmt":"2024-05-30T15:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bluekc.com\/blueprint\/?p=3331"},"modified":"2025-01-17T14:46:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T19:46:24","slug":"blue-kc-childrens-mercy-kansas-city-and-center-school-district-tackle-youth-mental-health-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bluekc.com\/blueprint\/healthier-living\/behavioral-health\/blue-kc-childrens-mercy-kansas-city-and-center-school-district-tackle-youth-mental-health-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue KC, Children’s Mercy Kansas City, and Center School District tackle youth mental health crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Center High School teacher Dr. Diana Elkishawi may teach a different math skill in her algebra classes each day, but there\u2019s one activity you may not expect to be in her lesson plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do a daily check-in with the kids,\u201d Dr. Elkishawi said. \u201cIt has helped me be more aware of the kids\u2019 mental health and helped keep myself in check because sometimes I\u2019m not okay and by communicating that with the students, it helped the students cut me some slack.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mother of three boys has been teaching math for 17 years, with the last three of those years taking place at Center High School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have always been an advocate of mental health,\u201d she said. \u201cThroughout my time as a student, when I felt the teacher cared, I was more open to receiving advice. I spend a lot of time connecting with the kids and listening to the kids. Sometimes, they want to vent about something in the hallway. You\u2019re dealing with human beings. They\u2019re growing, and they\u2019re trying to find who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Elkishawi shared a proud moment from earlier in her career as a teacher on the power that comes with caring about a student.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a student who was failing all the classes and would act out,\u201d she said. \u201cHe would get physical with male teachers. The principal asked the student why he didn\u2019t act out in my class. The student said he respected me because I respected him back. He knew I believed in him. I sat him by me. And when I saw what he was capable of, I said to him, \u2018Do you know you have an engineering mind? You\u2019re going to come to me one day and say that you\u2019re in engineering school.\u2019 And I kid you not. Seven years later, he comes back to the school and tells the principal he only wants to see Dr. Diana. She brings him upstairs, and he says to me, \u2018I came here to tell you one thing. I am in my second year of engineering school.\u2019 I started crying. I was smiling. I use that story to show the way you treat people can either make them or break them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to January 2024 when Dr. Elkishawi learned about a new mental health initiative that had launched in her district.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI cannot tell you how happy and honored I am about this movement because I believe in this 200 percent,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is so important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How this partnership began<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
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Blue KC, Children\u2019s Mercy Kansas City, and Center School District representatives discuss plans to bring restorative practice training to the urban school district in Kansas City, Missouri. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThis movement\u201d that Dr. Elkishawi is referring to is a three-year early intervention pilot program that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC) and Children\u2019s Mercy Kansas City launched with the Center School District in Kansas City, Missouri, to tackle the mental health crisis among school-aged children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Children\u2019s Mercy Kansas City, more than 15 million children nationwide require mental health services, but many do not receive the care they need. In the Kansas City region, 40-50% of youth go untreated. In 2022, Children\u2019s Mercy Kansas City reported nearly 3,000 assessments in the ER for acute mental health needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you think about why it\u2019s important to Blue KC, it\u2019s about supporting our community and the future of our community; but more importantly, it really is the overall well-being of our community,\u201d said Dr. Raelene Knolla, Blue KC Vice President of Population Health and Senior Medical Director. \u201cWe know that one in five adolescents has a diagnosis of mental or emotional behavioral disorders. It\u2019s trying to find ways to improve that early on. We were having conversations with Children\u2019s Mercy for multiple years about what we can do in the Kansas City metro area with mental well-being and our youth and recognize that it\u2019s been a crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Blue KC and Children\u2019s Mercy got together to say, \u2018hey, let\u2019s do something together,\u2019 we essentially had two parameters,\u201d said Robert Steele, MD, Executive VP, Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Children\u2019s Mercy Kansas City. \u201cIt was we want to do it in mental and behavioral health, and we probably ought to do it within the schools.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This collaborative effort was created after careful and intentional consideration of the specific needs and strengths of the Center School District, which is comprised of 2,500 students, and designed to improve access to behavioral health education and services in the school setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen we first talked to Center School District Superintendent Dr. Yolanda Cargile, she said we need support for the teachers, the staff and the parents,\u201d Dr. Knolla said. \u201cWe need to help support the students in a different way. And we need to educate and train.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am so over ISS (in-school suspension) and OSS (out-of-school suspension),\u201d Dr. Elkishawi said. \u201cKids belong in the classroom. I\u2019m not saying they shouldn\u2019t be accountable for their actions. But that accountability can happen in a more positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are restorative practices?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The pilot program, in part, will incorporate education on and implementation of restorative practice training for the urban school district with the expertise of RestorED<\/a>. Reggie Berry and Sarah Eblen launched RestorED in 2022 after working as teachers at Southeast High School in the Kansas City Public School District.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Anti-Bullying Alliance defines restorative practices<\/a>, which is also known as restorative justice, as a way of working with conflict that puts the focus on repairing the harm that has been done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRestorED is not sharing a program,\u201d Berry pointed out. \u201cIt\u2019s really a mindset shift that takes individuals to really think about their work, about what they value and what do these values look like in the spaces that they share.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe idea is that if a student is misbehaving, that is a sign of a call for help and they actually need more community,\u201d Eblen said. \u201cI think that\u2019s like the aha for folks. It\u2019s like, \u2018yeah, every time that I\u2019ve messed up in my life, I\u2019ve had wrap-around people who have said let me lift you back up.\u2019 Not all of our kids have access to wrap-around support in their communities, so how do we make sure that it occurs at school. If they fall, there are hands waiting to lift them back up and not push them literally as they\u2019re already down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Center School District Assistant Superintendent Dr. Amy Casey is in her 31st year of being an education professional and has a strong background in restorative work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like that idea, \u2018Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover,\u2019” she said. \u201cIf you are not communicating and talking to one another, you don\u2019t know what that person is really like or what\u2019s important to them. I always say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So, part of that restorative work is creating that space and that time up front as an investment rather than having to repair harm on the back end, which is going to take way more time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples of restorative practices<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Now that you know more about what restorative practices means, how exactly will this preventative care model be implemented and what are examples of how it will be put into practice? Here\u2019s a breakdown, beginning with an example from Eblen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the lowest approach of restorative practices, when something occurs like a student is sleeping, instead of saying, \u2018that\u2019s a demerit, I\u2019m going to call your parent or I\u2019m moving your clip on the chart, so you have less access to incentives,\u2019 the idea is to teach a skill in that moment, so it sounds like, \u2018hey I noticed you\u2019re sleeping. What\u2019s the expectation right now during class?\u2019 Having a student state that and be like, \u2018ok cool what does that look like right now? I can have my head up. Awesome. Cool.\u2019 And the idea is like we\u2019re just shifting who has the responsibility in the classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNext level is like now we\u2019re having conflict between two individuals,\u201d Berry said. \u201cThat could be a student and a student, or a student and a teacher. We like to think about this idea that it\u2019s not like rules are being broken at a time, it\u2019s the relationship that has been fractured. So, we need to find spaces for those individuals to work out their conflict and then come to some resolution. What it looks like is conferencing with the two.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berry added: \u201cIf conflict keeps rising, we\u2019ve got to get more community involved. We do harm circles where now we\u2019re inviting parents, teachers and two students to share what is their perspective and how it impacted them, what they want and need from their loved ones and what do we need collectively to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will happen during the next three years?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The initiative is currently in Stage 1, which Eblen said is all about learning. All eight Center School District principals have developed a team at each of their schools that is made up of leadership, teachers, and support staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat team is going to be responsible for delivering the training during next school year,\u201d Eblen said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re working primarily this year with that team. And by the end of the summer, they will have over 50 hours of restorative training. We started strategically this year so they could get some of those skills and then practice them this year with their students. It\u2019s really just about learning the skills before we think about implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of this initiative, Children’s Mercy Kansas City has also formed and embedded a Behavioral Health Consultation Team to develop a school-based model of support for the district. The Behavioral Health Consultation Team’s work at the systems level will lay the groundwork for restorative practices to thrive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve been doing great work getting student, staff, and parent feedback by attending sports games, committee meetings, classroom circles, etc. and working at the systems level to make restorative practices possible,\u201d Eblen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI saw one parent who was extremely enthusiastic about it,\u201d Dr. Elkishawi said. \u201cShe believes the way the students handle the situation will help the students in the end. This is why behavior should be handled before academics. When behavior is taken care of, then academics become easy. Our kids are smart kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe teachers already are feeling very good about how they can improve things,\u201d Dr. Steele said. \u201cI mean that\u2019s really what we have spent a lot of time on. You\u2019ve got to have a critical mass of folks trained. And there\u2019s sort of a train-the-trainer kind of method, so it then disperses throughout the entire school district.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll shift into implementation mode in the fall,\u201d Eblen said. \u201cThe restorative teams will start doing some training with their staff. Reggie and I will be at schools all next year, helping them with practices, doing some coaching, giving each school some feedback on how are we doing on this practice, where could we see improvement and interviewing students and staff about how they feel about the initial rollout of restorative practices.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eblen added: \u201cThen, in that last year with the Blue KC and Children\u2019s Mercy team, we start to shift into checking to see if we are living out our goals of restorative practices. If a student requests a conference, how long does that take? If a staff member wants a conference, how long does that take? Do we hear restorative language in classrooms, or do we still hear exclusionary discipline practices?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What initiative hopes to accomplish<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The goals of the initiative are to proactively support the social and emotional needs of students and teachers with evidence-based behavioral health education and to improve student engagement, attendance, and performance, while simultaneously reducing the incidents of disruptive behavior that often lead to suspension and expulsion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am very excited, hopeful and optimistic about the changes that are going to come from this,\u201d Dr. Knolla said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the future, we want to see suspensions going down,\u201d Berry said. \u201cWe want Center to create this system, so they can have conversations to find their way of healing the community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how you get teachers to stay,\u201d Eblen said. \u201cThat\u2019s how you decrease teacher turnover, staff turnover and that\u2019s how you keep kids in school. The saddest thing for me ever is that a kid doesn\u2019t have a trusted adult in the building, which means when something occurs, they do not report it. And that\u2019s why this work is important because it\u2019s community work, and every student in the building should say, \u2018I have one adult in the building who I can trust with mental health.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eblen added: \u201cIn two years of staff using restorative practices at Southeast, the recidivism (students who had five or more discipline reports) reduced 54%,\u201d Eblen said. \u201cSo, we know when we have meaningful interventions with students, and we involve them in it instead of doing it to them, they don\u2019t continue to harm a community because now they\u2019re a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur kids are the heart of our mission,\u201d Dr. Casey said. \u201cThey are the reason we are here. And if you want to take the best care of them, you really have to take the best care of our teachers. So, what is beautiful about this is you start there. Start with that leadership, and there is a ripple effect. It\u2019s like throwing that pebble in the pond. It just ripples out. It starts with the leadership, then ripples out to the teachers and then ripples out to the kids and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is always room for improvement, even though I feel like I\u2019m already applying restorative concepts,\u201d Dr. Elkishawi said. \u201cI\u2019m hoping it will give me more of a streamline and more people will follow it. Maybe the training will give me a better understanding of why certain behaviors happen. We\u2019re all excited about the direction this is headed for the sake of the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n\r\n\t\t\t

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