For years, the Upper Grand District School Board and the Wellington Catholic District School Board have looked for ways to engage and support youth with mental health.
But with the pandemic, they’ve had to get creative to support youth and their families so they collaborated to tackle mental health issues together.
“We’re putting in a lot of effort because we know there's a lot of need right now. We’re very concerned with the numbers we heard from mental health and child protection services and call of crisis,” said Jenny Marino, mental health and addictions lead at the UGDSB.
We really want to make sure we do everything we can as partners in the community to support our youth and families.
The UGDSB and the WCDSB collaborated with Canadian Mental Health Association Waterloo Wellington and its youth-oriented support group YouthTALK to create monthly student conferences where students can attend and create a call to action. The themes at the conferences are aligned with The Umbrella Project (a UGDSB project which focuses on different themes and activities each month to teach students and staff about the different facets of mental health and well-being).
Marino said the youth will lead monthly after school or evening conferences where there are breakout groups and cycle educational pieces. The conferences will have guest speakers to encourage youth to get involved.
“Coming together with other youth is something that youth don't have a lot of right now. It is virtual but it is another way to come together,” said Marino.
Youth register individually through the CMHA WW portal and the hours put in can be used toward their graduation requirement of community hours. The conferences will also be recorded for a certain period of time so students can access it at a later date.
“What I really like about it is that the CMHA WW, myself and the WCDSB mental health lead are really working on how this can look so that the content, the way it's designed, is really by youth for youth,” said Marino.
“It's going to be great. The challenges are going to be giving back. It might be something like walking a neighbour's dog or whatever it is and they have a week to complete that.”
The UGDSB has also seen a lot of success with The Umbrella Project that began in October which attracted support from the larger community.
“Edge Mutual contacted me when they found out we were doing The Umbrella Project and offered an $18,000 donation specifically to support that work.”
Marino said this year, the $18,000 will be used toward making banners for all front entrances in schools and board office buildings while the remaining will be used for the monthly conferences.
She said it was important to switch to virtual services to offer consistent support. With many teacher training cancelled this year, the ASSIST training — a two-day training on how to intervene if anyone has thoughts of suicide — remained mandatory.
Marino said while the UGDSB initiated The Umbrella Project for their board, WCDSB and the CMHA WW have really embraced the monthly themes.
“What we are trying to do is create shared activities, shared recognition of the same themes every month because the more we do this as a community, the more it keeps us all connected in the time of disconnection,” said Marino.
“Many people are having increased levels of stress, have increased difficulties in life whether its financial or housing or work whatever or health. We want to make sure we buffer that with as much positive skill-building and wellness activities and things we can do to mitigate any risk factors that may be there,” said Marino.
Sony Brar, mental health lead at the Catholic school board said they collaborated with the UGDSB because they observed an increase of youth wanting to learn more about mental health, wellbeing, and coping during these difficult and trying times.
“These conferences will provide youth with information on healthy relationships, their physical and mental health, mindfulness and gratitude, stress management, and self-care,” said Brar.
“Now more than ever is a time to come together as a community to create a sense of connection for our isolated youth and their families.”
She said the boards have seen incredible success in the work they’ve been doing together.
“We have found the more we come together to work collaboratively, the more we demonstrate to our community that we are all in this together,” said Brar.
