Published: 05-20-08
For Increased Mental Health Care -- Only School District in Texas To Receive Grant; Only Charter School in Nation
IRVING TX – The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Safe & Drug Free Schools recently announced the winners of its 2008 Grants for the Integration of Schools & Mental Health Systems. Only twelve programs were funded.
“The majority of programs chosen were large education service centers or large public school districts across the United States. Of those school districts Winfree Academy is the only charter school and the only Texas district chosen. We consider this to be a great honor” said Melody Chalkley Winfree Academy’s founder and CEO.
The Grants are designed to provide funds to increase student access to high-quality mental health care by developing innovative approaches that link school systems with the local mental health care system.
Winfree Academy’s program Linking Tree is an online clearing house that seamlessly networks educators and mental health service providers to quickly provide students with access to mental health services.
“Educators are often the last available resource for troubled youth” said Chalkley. “Linking Tree’s design was centered on ease of use so no child slips through the cracks because an educator doesn’t know who to contact.”
Though Winfree Academy has six campuses in the Dallas/Fort Worth area spanning three counties this grant project has been designed for the two Tarrant County campuses in Grapevine and North Richland Hills.
The program that has been developed for this grant is entitled “Linking Tree: An Online Provider Networking Educators and Mental Health Agencies with Students and Families.” In order to accomplish the goals of this program Winfree Academy has partnered with MHMR of Tarrant County Tarrant County Juvenile Services and the Lena Pope Home.
The Linking Tree program has been designed to create innovative linkages between Winfree Academy its partners and other applicable non-profit organizations. These linkages will help provide equitable mental health services to students so as to equip them with the tools they need to be successful academically and to graduate from high school.
The two major project goals are to increase the identification of students with mental health issues and increase student and family access to mental health services.
The three main components to the grant project are education detection and intervention.
The goal of the education piece is to train teachers school staff students and families about mental health issues warning signs of mental health issues and about available community resources.
The detection component will implement a response system allowing school staff to categorize students based on recognized symptoms and then to place them in the Linking Tree system.
The goal of the intervention component is to implement a web-based alert system that links Winfree Academy with the mental health organizations that can provide direct services to the students.
The Linking Tree system will serve all students on Winfree Academy’s two Tarrant County campuses during the 2008-2009 school year. These students are primarily at-risk youths in grades nine through twelve. 96 of these students are at-risk of dropping out of high school and many have previously dropped out and then come back to school.
