Partnering for progress: Inside Pee Dee school's push for better mental health access

Lake City, S.C. (WPDE) — Editor's note: This is part of a multi-story series about how educators are working to solve the achievement gap in our local school districts. Click here to read the introduction.

While school hallways across the south are quiet as summer break sets in, administrators are hard at work planning and preparing for the 2019-2020 school year.

Some of those discussions will inevitably center around the increasing need for mental health services in the education system.

"I cannot educate that child if they've been abused," Latta Superintendent John Kirby told ABC 15 Investigates during his interview, echoing the sentiments of many of his peers. "I have to solve that first."

Many officials said the cost of adding services would stretch their budgets too far, given the limited resources already at hand.

In Lake City, officials believe they may have found an answer: a public-private partnership with Florence-based Wellspring Psychology Group.

Starting this past school year, psychologists from the company were given an office inside Lake City's middle school, and were able to pull kids who needed extra attention away from class during certain times in the week.

There, they worked through issues with the children that were preventing them from unlocking their full potential.

"We're reversing the cycle the same way it happened, because these kids are able to see in little ways how do I begin to make a difference in my community," Faith Tyner explained.

Tyner works on the second aspect of the partnership: training teachers on methods that can more effectively reach students, as well as how to see particular situations from a struggling child's perspective.

"Trauma begins in utero," she said. "So anything that is very scary or very difficult, whether they have a conscious memory of it or not, the child's going to be affected. If they've ever seen the movie inside out and the little fear guy that's running around in their brain, it over-activates that part of the brain."

Lake City school district officials say the additional help has been eye-opening.

"The needs were far beyond what we had originally thought about," Special Ed Director Cheryl Hubbard-George said, explaining that children who worked with state-provided psychologists "weren't getting better."

She said progress was being made in some aspects of the state level. Starting next year, she said all schools will be required to screen their students for factors that will impact their learning.

Many of them center around mental health.

"This needs to be on a personal level," Wellspring co-founder Dr. Jason Anderson explained. "We have to build relationships, we have to invest in these children and in these families, and if we're not doing that, I think we're probably not going to accomplish our goal."

Hubbard said the partnership doesn't push the district's budget too far., and Anderson explained that many of their services are covered by insurance.

Both agreed that stigma around therapy, or psychological services, was a far bigger hurdle to overcome.

"We don't always believe that mental health is something we should be seeking," Hubbard said.

ABC 15 Investigates is a team of journalists committed to holding the powerful accountable and digging into the issues that affect you most. Click here to view the team's work.

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