NJ Cut Of Student Mental Health Program Amid COVID Sparks Outcry

BRICK, NJ — When Chris Wozniak was struggling with personal conflicts during his junior year at Brick Memorial High School, he was able to drop in at the School Based Youth Services office between classes to get support.

"Some things you don't want to talk about with your parents," Wozniak said. "I was able to go down there during my school time and address so many things I couldn't address by myself."

"I didn’t even have to go out of my way," he said.

Starting Oct. 1, however, students seeking counseling will no longer have that resource right in school. The School Based Youth Services Program, which has been operating as a grant-funded program in schools across the state since 1987, is set to be eliminated in New Jersey’s nine-month fiscal year 2021 budget.

The state Department of Children and Families confirmed Monday evening that the Office of School Linked Services and several of its programs, including the School Based Youth Services Program, will cease to exist after Sept. 30. The office had a budget of $15 million in fiscal year 2020, state officials said. That funding is being shifted to the department’s Children’s System of Care, but most of its programs and staff are being eliminated, a department spokeswoman confirmed.

The spokeswoman said the program is being eliminated because the state believes its Children’s System of Care can provide those services and meet those needs through out-of-school programs.

"Over the last 20 years, New Jersey has built one of the most robust, statewide networks of care for children and adolescents with behavioral health needs and/or intellectual and developmental disabilities in the country," the spokeswoman said in an email. "The proposed $45 million infusion in FY 21 will allow for updated rates to providers for their critical services and to provide the crucial care and assistance families may need, in coordination and collaboration with local providers and Family Support Organizations statewide."

"In addition, in 2015, the federal Every Student Succeeds Act created federal support for robust out-of-school-time programs," she said, and referred to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. The Department of Education oversees 63 of those centers, which provide academic enrichment programs in areas of high poverty and low-performing schools, according to the federal program.

Supporters of the School Based Youth Services Program, which operates in 90 schools and serves between 25,000 and 30,000 students through prevention education as well as mental health supports, say the in-school counseling access is the critical component of the services it provides.

"School-based programs provide students on a daily basis with the mental health and crisis intervention services that they are in such need of right now, and there will be a significant gap in the care of these students without these programs," wrote Nick Spanola, the school-based counselor at Brick Memorial High School, on a petition he posted on Change.org. It had more than 18,500 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.

"Many students are not able to afford mental health care outside of School-Based for various reasons, and these students will now not be able to receive services necessary to their development and health," he wrote.

"I have plenty of kids I work with who rely on these (School Based) services," said Lauren Blann, a pediatric nurse practitioner who works at Children's Specialized Hospital in Toms River. "There’s so few resources in the community. If a child needs additional help, I can’t reach into my drawer and pull out a long list of services. They’re just not there."

The School Based Youth Services Program is free to students and confidential, said David Seegert, the director of the School Based Youth Services programs for Preferred Behavioral Health, which oversees the programs in three Brick Township schools and at Lakewood High School.

Last year, 800 Brick students sought individual counseling through the program, Seegert said.

"We offer something no one else does," he said. "There was a revolving door of students all day long." When the pandemic shut schools in mid-March, the School Based counselors had virtual counseling up and running in a week, he said.

In addition to the 800 students who received one-on-one help, another 3,000 were reached through prevention work, such as substance abuse prevention education. Statewide, he said the program directors have estimated the program has reached between 25,000 and 30,000 students.

"That’s a huge number of kids in New Jersey receiving mental health counseling," Seegert said.

Students have the right under New Jersey state law to access mental health services without their parents’ consent, Seegert said, but as a practical matter, doing so is difficult when services are outside the school, because students have to ask their parents for transportation or to pay for the services.

"One of the nice things about the School Based (program) was they could go confidentially and get help," Blann said. "For these kids who come from homes with domestic violence or other issues, this is a huge plus."

Seegert has been running the School Based programs for 17 years, after three years as a counselor. He said the number of students they have seen has risen sharply in recent years and runs the spectrum from students who are severely at risk because of dangerous home environments, to high-achieving students who are stressed by the expectations of earning straight As in AP courses while working a job, playing at least one sport and being involved in clubs.

"Our agency is very trauma-informed. We don’t make assumptions about the students. We listen with them, we talk with them," Seegert said. Some students only seek help for once or twice.

"Sometimes it takes four years to get them to share," Seegert said.

With the stresses that everyone has faced during the shutdowns of the coronavirus pandemic, the number of students needing support is expected to be greater than ever, he said.

Suicide rates among students have been rising for the last several years. A 2017 report on New Jersey youth suicide trends by the state Department of Children and Families said the rate of suicides among 10- to 18-year-olds had risen across the board. The report compared suicide rates from 2012-14 to 2013-15. In the Skylands region, which encompasses the northwest portion of the state, the rate increased from 7.4 suicides per 100,000 children in 2014 to 7.5 in 2015. In the Shore area, comprised of Monmouth, Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties, the rate was 6.5, up from 5.4 per 100,000. The lowest rate, in the northeast counties, was 4.5 per 100,000, up from 4.3. The Delaware Bay counties had a rate of 5.5, up from 5.2 per 100,000.

The report noted that 36 percent of boys ages 10-18 and 40 percent of the girls ages 10-18 who died by suicide had suffered mental health crises within two weeks of their deaths. Thirty-nine percent of the boys and 43 percent of the girls had current mental health issues at the time of their suicides, according to the report.

The Centers for Disease Control reported suicide was the second-leading cause of death among children ages 10 through 18 as of 2017.

Blann said access to mental health services for children is a critical problem, and that she has seen the stress caused by the pandemic in her own home, in her 10-year-old daughter who has been unable to play sports and spend time with her friends since schools shut down in March.

"We’ve taken away all of the things that make them feel good," she said.

But it's her son who's impacted directly by the removal of the School Based Youth Services program. Her son, who has ADHD and is on the autism spectrum, has dealt with bullying repeatedly. Last year, he was connected with Randi Bell, the Veterans Memorial Middle School school-based counselor, and Bell made a huge difference.

"He hates school," Blann said. "Half the time she was the only reason he went to school. He knew he could go see her at any time, and she had his back."

"She wasn’t judgmental; she would listen. She helped him and really kept him afloat," Blann said.
She has grave concerns about what will happen this year if that in-school counseling is taken away.

"My son relied heavily on those services. I'm scared to death for him," said Blann, who has been searching for a private in-person treatment program for her son since April. Everything has been telehealth, which she said has not worked for her son.

"I have private insurance, and I cannot find anything" that provides in-person services, she said.

For families covered by New Jersey Family Care insurance, the options and services are even more limited, she said. “A lot of these (School Based Youth Services) programs are in underserved communities, and now there’s nowhere for these kids to turn to."

"These kids are in crisis. I see it day in and day out. Now we’re going to take this away," Blann said.

While the Office of School Linked Services is being eliminated, three of its programs — the New Jersey Child Assault Prevention, the 2NDFLOOR Youth Helpline suicide prevention hotline, and the Traumatic Loss Coalitions for Youth, which provides community support after a suicide or other traumatic death — will continue under the Children’s System of Care, the Department of Children and Families spokeswoman said.

"The Governor’s budget for the Department of Children and Families and the reductions to the School Based Youth Services programs must be viewed within the context of the increase of $45 million to the Department’s budget to support the NJ Children’s System of Care," she wrote in an email. "The DCF School Based Youth Services programs date back about 30 years or more. In the intervening decades, the government infrastructure in service to children and families — as well as the funding landscape — has changed considerably."

She said the department is committed to working with the state Department of Education and the school districts "to promote the Children’s System of Care as an effective and appropriate alternative to SBYS. The NJ Children’s System of Care is open 24/7/365 and can be reached at 877-652-7624."

Advocates for School Based Youth Services programs aren’t convinced.

"Kids in crisis aren’t going to see an outside counselor," Seegert said. More than half of the students who sought help through the program in Brick were on a path to self-destruction without it, he said.

"You can’t prove what didn’t happen," he said, in terms of students who were turned away from substance abuse or suicide because of the counseling. But he knows from speaking with students who have gone through the program that it has made a difference.

Wozniak, who graduated from Brick Memorial High School in the midst of the pandemic, said it did for him. "I've learned to love myself more. It's really helped me," he said. "Even my mom saw I was taking what we were discussing and applying it to my life."

"I'm really grateful we had a program like that," he said. "They care about their patients’ concerns."

"I wish people would see that it is very impactful in the school community," Wozniak said.

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