Extension to school mental health pilot project sought

PRINCE ALBERT — The Prince Albert Catholic School Division has been pleased with the results of the Mental Health Capacity Building (MHCB) pilot project at St. John Community School and would like to see it extended.

The division’s board of education voted in favour of negotiating an extension of the agreement between parties for 2025-28 at their regular meeting on Monday.

“We see the impact in the school,” Education Director Lorel Trumier said. “We've got great people working in those positions. There is a difference that's being made for students and staff have embraced it, so we would like to continue that initiative.

"We know that it's the three-year time frame is coming to an end by the end of 2024 and so we really wanted to put ourselves in a position where we understood what the board would like to do on this matter and we're recommending that we would continue to negotiate.”

The previous agreement is between the Saskatchewan Health Authority, the Ministry of Education and the Catholic Division. Trumier said the division assumes that the opportunity to extend exists.

Trumier said the program has been booked full almost since the beginning.

"We don't know if Saskatchewan Health Authority, Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education are going to join this partnership again, but we are and because of the good work that's being done has benefits to our students that we're anticipating that it will continue,” she said. “We want to be in a position to prepare for that if that's happened. It'll happen quicker than we think. December 2024 is going to come fast.”

The MHCB initiative focuses on prevention, health promotion, early identification and intervention by helping youth better manage their feelings and find help if they become overwhelmed.

The pilot program started at St. John Community School in September 2022. The initiative operates 12 months a year and focuses on community outreach in the summer.

Kara Quirion is the Wellness Promoter and Regan Jacobson is the Wellness Coordinator. Jacobson works with both the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and Catholic Division and is headquartered in PACI.

Jacobson and Quirion are responsible for delivering mental health promotion and prevention programming, building capacity in other staff and supporting students by connecting them to community resources.

The student regulation strategy at the school includes five steps. These included Mindful Moments, classroom check-ins, a reset station, direction to school supports and outside supports for students by administration.

The students are taught to understand their emotions in colour-coded zones. The green zone means everything is well, the blue zone means to begin monitoring, the yellow zone means that there may be a problem and the red zone is the emergency zone.

The reset station is in each classroom and is a regulation bin with tools to help students regulate and reset. If that does not work, they are encouraged to talk to a teacher.

Each classroom is also provided with toolkits. These include emergency numbers, mental health literacy and language, named emotions and strategies. The toolkits have colour-coded pages to match each of the zones and include guidance for each colour.