Please consult again
This story produced in collaboration with the local civic media organization, El Tímpano.
Yesebel Inga works at Melrose’s Bridges Academy in East Oakland, where she is the only therapist of about 400 students, a quarter of whom are newcomers. Most are from Guatemala and speak Mam, a Mayan language spoken by about a million people in that country and Mexico.
“A lot of them, when they arrived, only spoke Mam, they didn’t speak Spanish or English,” Inga said. “Then they were a little lost, you know?”
The director of Inga’s school at the time, Anita Comelo, had to make difficult decisions about which young people could see the therapist and which could not.
“So we have to decide which trauma is the biggest, you know?” said Comelo, adding that those fellows are usually children. the classroom. “
Comelo says this means that other academics who tend to internalize the trauma of their anxiety and depression aren’t getting the help they need.
As young people return to school this month in the Bay Area, one thing that has not been replaced is their intellectual fitness needs: Reports of increased depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and emergency hospital visits exacerbated by the pandemic are perceived as a crisis. according to reports from the CDC, Ana E. Casey and MHA.
To meet those needs, California is investing billions of new dollars, in addition to state and federal pandemic relief funds. Bridges Academy of Melrose, a public school in Oakland, has figured out a way to leverage cash to maximize impact, moving from crisis control to prevention.
Because the school’s therapist, Inga, would only have to serve a maximum of 15 students at a time, dozens of other Bridges youth who may have only used the assistance didn’t get it, and the result was a huge disruption in the classroom and on the playground, says Rosana Covarrubias. network school assignment manager.
“There was a lot of cyberbullying and we saw it break out here at school because of what was going on online,” Covarrubias said. “They needed intellectual aptitude for that. We had students with suicidal thoughts.
However, when Covarrubias tried to refer the academics to other organizations in the network they were marrying, he said they had a waiting list.
“They’ll say, ‘Okay, thank you for the referral, we’ll get back to you. ‘And it takes months before they are paired with someone who can help them and be their therapist,” Covarrubias said.
And those are the acute cases.
Bridges’ therapist, Inga, says what makes things worse is the lack of a physical care policy for preventive care. Currently, Medi-Cal-controlled care plans and advertising providers like Kaiser do not reimburse county behavioral fitness for youth without a clinical diagnosis.
This could be replaced with legislation, namely AB 552, which now deserves to succeed in the governor’s office. , for example, to provide remedy to students with more moderate needs.
“If we had to prepare young people with curative and preventive support, you know, we wouldn’t have fifth-graders with suicidal thoughts,” said Inga, who works for Seneca.
California has begun an unprecedented investment to address the intellectual aptitude desires of K-12 students.
There is $4. 4 billion for a youth and youth intellectual fitness initiative to decrease structural barriers that prevent youth from accessing inpatient schools; Another $4. 1 billion for the network’s schools, adding investments for intellectual aptitude needs; as well as billions in more federal and state pandemic relief dollars, some of which also aim to help students recover from the depression and anxiety caused by the pandemic and the school closures that followed.
In the 3rd federal investment circular for schools due to the pandemic, the Oakland Unified School District raised more than $100 million. According to records filed with the state in May of this year, the district spent about $650,000 of that money. And of that amount, almost part of the district’s reports went to intellectual health.
But until the time the COVID relief cash went to Bridges Elementary, the school ended up with $20,000 in intellectual fitness priority. The cash wasn’t even enough for a full-time single therapist with benefits charging around $160,000.
The district says it has not yet spent all the resources and it is an area of investment. He says schools last year applied for the investments they sought based on their site’s wishes and had flexibility in how they spent the dollars.
Comelo and staff will use their $20,000 to rent a part-time clinical therapist for two hours a week. Inga and the part-time doctor will begin a six-week organizational treatment consultation with 8-9 students, almost all local mam speakers.
“At first, everyone was calm and shy,” Inga said. In the past, Inga had worked with other young people in detention camps along the border, and it is possible that she also identifies as an immigrant. “My parents brought me here when I was 15, and I didn’t have that support. . . my reports brought me here in this group. “
Among the academics who joined the first newly formed preventive treatment organization, Heymer Domingo Godinez, 10.
“When I first came to Bridges Academy, I was scared. I cried because I was afraid of the students,” Heymer said in Spanish.
Heymer had arrived from Guatemala with her father in first grade, screaming, kicking and crying when he dropped her off at school. I was afraid to come to school because in Guatemala I was too young to go.
Heymer and his teachers describe having to carry Heymer to calm her down and keep her in class. In fourth grade, Heymer says he only had one friend. Inga says young people like Heymer cared about his position at school.
“They didn’t really feel like they could just accept as true to others,” Inga explained. “Like once they got here, there wasn’t a space to really communicate about themselves and their culture. “At its most sensitive, the pandemic has hit families like Heymer’s, who lives in East Oakland, hard; their parents lost their jobs and almost lost their homes, before the school stepped in to help them.
When Heymer and the other scholars combined for the small organization’s treatment session, Inga asked each of them to bring something to represent them. clothes I wore home.
Heymer nervous and a little scared to be under the microscope. “Because other people look at us and other people think, ‘Why does a woman wear a cut like that?'”
Inga told her students that they may just be waiting to get their peers’ attention, but that they deserve to see it as an opportunity and not something they would like to avoid.
“Look, some other kids may look at you strangely, but that’s because they haven’t been exposed to other cultures,” Inga advised. “And if they ask you or say something bad, it’s like, you know, ‘Just let me tell you about my culture, let me tell you what that means. ‘”
As the organization’s treatment sessions unfolded, so did efforts through the school’s teachers, aimed at creating a greater sense of belonging for Mam’s students.
“I know that at parent-instructor conferences, and I’m pretty sure other instructors have done that too, I explicitly told students in front of their families, ‘Please keep practicing with your mom. ‘We don’t need you to do it. “lose that language,” said fourth-grade instructor Vivian Yen.
Yen said some teachers have taken Mam language classes, while others are critically rethinking their programs.
“I know my school-level team, as well as grades 5 and 3, did. We were in our ELA [English Language Arts] program because all the texts are very white-focused,” Yen said.
“I think the George Floyd type of homicide led us to adjust our curriculum and make it a little more focused on social justice and more ethnic studies-focused. It’s so that academics also have time to think about their own identity, to think about how they have compatibility and can counter those racist narratives that we are given all the time,” Yen said.
The joy Heymer and the other scholars felt as they wore their cuts spread: more and more Mam-speaking academics began to wear their classic cuts on Fridays.
“Even the boys!” Inga said, “It’s just beautiful. “
When fifth-grade graduation arrived, it was Heymer who welcomed parents to the occasion in Mam and directed the show. And for the first time, all the students who submitted recited poems in English, Spanish and Mam. Everyone used all 3 languages.
Teachers see this as a culmination and a watershed moment in the culture that replaces the efforts they have worked so hard for.
“Honestly, I think it’s just the accumulation of a bunch of little things that led to this move,” Yen said.
This year, Heymer is in sixth grade at a new university, Elmhurst United in East Oakland. As she walks the 8 blocks from school, she enjoys singing songs from her church, The Gospel Church of God Heals Doctrine in Oakland. She says leaves her satisfied and calm.
Heymer saw the school before the categories began, scanning photos of staff on the bulletin board outside the school office, looking for faces and names of teachers he said might speak Spanish.
She says she worries about going to a new school, now she’s more confident about who she is and what she can do.
“I need to learn. I don’t care what others say about me. I only care about my brain and the realization of my dreams,” he said.
Heymer says that if she has to, she will call her ex at Bridges Academy to help her.
If you are interested in helping a young user who believes they suffer from depression or anxiety, below you will find some resources for you, thanks to several netpainting organizations that paint with the intellectual fitness needs of children.
Therapist Yesebel Inga sent this resource from Seneca:
https://senecacommunityresources. weebly. com/
If you are in Alameda County, here is your online page for intellectual fitness support.
https://www. acbhcs. org/
If you are a circle of family members suffering from an intellectual fitness crisis or a stressful time:
family paths
ENGLISH| ESPAÑOL
Parental Stress Helpline
800-829-3777
https://familypaths. org/
Here is the 24/7 National Suicide Prevention Line and text line
1888-628-9454
1800-273-8255 English
Text: CASA en el 741741
There is a new number 988: https://www. samhsa. gov/find-help/988
The following is that of the Crown with resources:
https://www. dhcs. ca. gov/Pages/ObtainingMentalHealthAssistance. aspx
And here’s a way to know your county’s behavioral fitness contact number:
https://www. dhcs. ca. gov/individuals/Pages/MHPContactList. aspx
Of course, the most productive position to start is to contact your number one care doctor and ask for a referral for help.
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