Public Hearing to Consider the Collecting of the Water Quality and Flood Protection Fees on the Property Tax Bills; and Adoption of Resolution Finding [No] Majority Protest, Directing the Collection of Fees on the Property Tax Bills for Fiscal Year 2020-21 at the Rates Approved by Property Owners. (Public Works 351)
It's one of the highest needs in our community. In June 2019, the council approved allocating $100,000 of its operating and capital budget to help fund the school district's mental health programs. The city subsequently contracted with Airbus to provide these services for the 2019 2020 academic school year. I would now like to introduce Kel Jenks, the principal program director, to make a presentation about the services provided before our school year under the contract. And also Catherine Schwartz, the executive director of affairs, is also here tonight to answer questions. Okay, great. I didn't see her on the screen, but great. Hi, Mr. Jenks. Welcome. Nice to see you. And the floor is yours. Awesome. Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor and members of the council. As Eric introduced, my name is Kelly Jenks with Alameda Family Services and I'm the director of our school based services program. I want to start by thanking you for allowing me to come to share with you all how AFS was able to utilize the support from City Council to provide additional mental health services to high school youth in need. I believe there is a PowerPoint. I don't. Can you all see it? I don't think I can see it. Uh, not yet. But our clerk works magic. There we go. You heard that was going to have. No idea how. I was going to say next slide, but I didn't see it. All right. So on the next slide. So I just want to be able to share a brief history. So Alameda Family Services has been providing health and wellness services to the Alameda Unified School District for many years. We provide the three school based health centers on Alameda and Snell. And our focus is really to minimize the barriers to access for those families most in need by providing mental health and medical services to use with medical. There's been a high demand for mental health services for youth that have private insurance, specifically at our schools. ALAMEDA And then to now and as it was shared in the introduction over the past three years, the Social Services Human Relations Board, the Alameda Collaborative for Children, Youth and Families and a USD all separately identified youth mental health as an important issue that is greatly impacting our city. Next slide. Thank you. So a U.S. drone attacks have been working in partnership to identify ways to address these mental health needs. Together, we created a whole new system of supports in the elementary and middle schools, which had the most significant gap in service. However, there was still a need to address the mental health needs at Alameda High and Encino High. And so the Board of Education in Alameda sought out support from the city and designated AFC as the recipient of the city's support to address these needs. Subsequently, a new position was created to ensure that any youth coming to our health centers, regardless of insurance, was going to be able to connect with a clinician that's going to assess their level of need and support them in connecting with an appropriate service. Next slide. So over these next two sides, I'm going to go over the services that we provided. So screening and assessments, initial meetings with the clinician, including you selling out a screener and a clinician conducting the in-person assessment. We really wanted to make sure that any student who came in was going to meet in person with someone. They were going to get screened to determine their level of need. And then our therapist, through this funding, was going to provide them the resources to connect with an outside provider or provide that service themselves. The next thing that happens a lot in the high schools are check ins. So some youth come into the health center and they don't necessarily want ongoing services, but they do just want to be able to talk to someone about a timely issue that's causing them distress. We see this a lot during the beginning of the year, especially for freshmen who are coming in. And we see this a lot during AP testing, when the holidays are coming up, when you might be traveling to a different family member's house. And so we really had this as an area of need that the therapist provided check ins and then also a crisis drop in follow up. So students who were seen as a crisis drop in received additional follow up to ensure they were connected to a service. And so crises are distinguished as a situation that needs immediate attention where there is a significant concern for the youth safety. So we might have youth coming in who are talking about suicidal ideation, severe depression or experiencing a panic attack. And in that setting, this therapist would make sure to immediately with that youth, and if they were at another school, they would actually travel to whatever school that student was at to be able to connect with them. And we had that specific therapist through this funding, be that person, because then they were able to follow up with them either the next day or two days later or a week later to make sure they were connected to a service next line. The three other services that were provided. Are on. Were individual therapy students with a high level of need.