Dane County Executive Joe Parisi announced Tuesday the expansion of School Based Mental Health Teams, a budget program he initiated in 2014 to provide necessary mental health care and assistance to K-8 students.
“The original program was developed as a result of conversations I’ve had with people in the community around the issues of mental health challenges,” Parisi said.
Originally, the program included the school districts of Verona, Madison and Sun Prairie. He has expanded the program to include the DeForest, Middleton Heights, and Cross Plains school districts as well. The program caters to K-8 students but the primary focus is on middle school students, where school faculty members said most of the need is.
The Dane County Department of Human Services plans to invest $352,575 into the program, a 36 percent increase in funding from the 2015 budget appropriation. The expansion of the program and the increase in funding is reflective of the positive feedback the program has received.
“Other than growing, the model has been a great success. We designed it with a lot of input from the people we were going to partner with,” Parisi said. “So far, folks are very happy with the model. Our biggest challenge will be expanding the program with fairly significant fiscal challenges”.
This is one of the first successful programs of its kind and is one part of a widespread movement to destigmatize mental illnesses and provide care at a young age. Starting the program in schools works to make young children more aware and educated when it comes to such illnesses, Parisi said.
“This is something that’s been a long time coming,” Parisi said. “People are very aware that mental health issues present some very unique and difficult challenges.”
Parisi stated that his long-term goal for the program is to make mental health services easily accessible to those in need. He said he hopes to further increase funding in the future so that these goals may be realized and the program can assist as many people as possible.
