FAIRFIELD, Ohio — The Fairfield Community Foundation saved a mental health program that city school officials thought would not happen this year.
The foundation is providing $60,000 to retain four school-based support workers who engage with students at the Fairfield High School, Fairfield Academy and Creekside Middle School. The funds will help provide this service to students for the next two school years, said Matthew Crapo, Fairfield City Schools director of student services.
“We’re so happy the foundation was able to do this,” he said, adding the program is “just another example of the district really trying to help kids because this method of support workers.”
The district’s four contracted support workers were funded through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds, or ESSER, distributed due to the pandemic. Fairfield Schools used the funds in a number of ways, including mental health support. The district applied for and received other grants that supported this program, but they expired at the end of the previous school year and were not renewable.
Crapo said Fairfield students have daily mental health needs, and while private insurance does cover some of that care, many parents cannot afford the co-pays, and they are limited by the number of visits. The school-based support workers circumvent some of those insurance barriers as they are contracted by Fairfield Schools and don’t go through insurance providers.
“They become one of the many adults that support students throughout the day and fill the needs of our student’s mental health supports,” Crapo said.
As the district looked for other funding opportunities to help keep the program going, the Fairfield Community Foundation, an affiliate of the Hamilton Community Foundation, was able to contribute. Katie Braswell, vice president of the Hamilton Community Foundation, said the Fairfield foundation is trying to grow its unrestricted funds so it can provide more funding to support these types of programs within the community.
While it’s not yet known if Fairfield’s foundation can provide continual support, she said, “We’re just glad to help where we can.”
“We fund the needs of the community and this is something that we really felt was a critical need for the school district, and we wanted to be a part of the solution,” Braswell said. “It’s really a needed service that we don’t really think about because our kids are going through so much these days, and this service has been a great asset for the families of the schools.”
In the 2023-24 school year, the four school-based support workers (two at the high school, one at Fairfield Academy and one at Creekside) met with 279 students as of March 19 and completed 45 suicide assessments, of which 13 were considered high risk. Eight of those 13 were hospitalized.
“The data shows the work they have done and the lives they have possibly saved,” said Crapo. “They are a vital resource for our students, their families and the community.”
While the services are limited to just three school buildings, he said the district would like to add more support workers, but that requires additional funds.
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