GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (KSNB) – Grand Island Public Schools hosted its third annual Mental Health Summit Friday at the O’Connor Learning Center.
The summit brought together counselors, social workers and community partners to share strategies and connect.
In a room full of educators and mental health professionals, the focus was on the people who spend their days helping students and families. Grand Island Public Schools created the Mental Health Summit to give counselors, social workers and community providers time to learn and recharge.
Learning from each other
“I see sometimes crisis intervention type problems where a student will show up crying or a parent comes in to ask a question,” said Carrie Sheldon, a middle school social worker for Westridge and Walnut. “Each year we do our mental health summit. There is a subgroup of our social workers who volunteer to run that summit each year. We invite our community partners and therapists, counselors, social workers at GIPS, and just get together to do some learning.”
Members from the audience were able to stand up and get feedback on strategies and skills they have used and found successful in their jobs.
This year’s sessions covered anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges, along with practical skills staff can take back to their schools and agencies.
“So again, the neurodivergent learner, the student that has autism. Later today, they’re going to be talking at length about eating disorders, because we see younger and younger students that display characteristics of eating disorders. So it’s applicable to all of our all of our staff and all of those community partners,” said Summer Stephens, associate superintendent for Grand Island Public Schools.
Moving beyond labels
For community providers like Brandon Hinrichs, a community treatment aid for specialized outpatient services, the summit is about moving beyond labels and really seeing each child and family.
“Not just kind of having a, like, a cookie cutter mold for a child or a parents or whatever and trying to figure out, instead of giving a title to a child, like, oh, this child has ADHD. How can we maybe not focus on that diagnosis or other things and how, you know, interact with their other strengths to help them build and be autonomous on their own,” Hinrichs said.
Organizers see the summit as an investment in the caregivers so they can keep showing up for students and families across Grand Island.
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