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NPR Health
School-Based
Counselors Help Kids Cope With Fallout From Drug Addiction
Rachel Gotbaum
December 5, 2018
When Maddy Nadeau was a toddler, her mother wasn't able to care for
her. "I remember Mom was always locking herself in her room and she
didn't take care of me. My mom just wasn't around at the time," she
says.
Every day, her older sister Devon came home from elementary school and
made sure Maddy had something to eat.
"Devon would come home from school and fix them cold hot dogs or a bowl
of cereal — very simple items that both of them could eat," says Sarah
Nadeau, who fostered the girls and later adopted them.
The girls' parents struggled with drug addiction, and for several
years, the sisters moved in with different relatives and eventually,
foster homes. Nadeau says when they arrived at her home, both girls
were anxious and depressed and had a hard time focusing in school —
especially Maddy, who had been exposed to drugs in utero.
"That makes it very difficult for her brain to settle down enough to do
more than one task at a time," Nadeau says.
The Nadeaus live on Cape Cod, which has some of the highest numbers of
deaths due to opioid overdoses in Massachusetts. It's also where a
growing number of schools are hiring treatment counselors to work with
teachers and their students whose families are battling addiction. The
counselors work at the schools but are employed by Gosnold, the largest
provider of addiction services on the Cape.
In October, Congress authorized $50 million a year for the next five
years to fund mental health services to help school districts treat
students who have experienced trauma due to the opioid epidemic.
And an increasing number of school districts across the country are
starting not only to screen and treat at-risk kids for opioid
addiction, but also access mental health counseling specifically for
students whose families and communities are consumed by opioid abuse.
"Schools have more kids who cannot access the learning environment,"
says Sharon Hoover, co-director of The National Center for School
Mental Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Children are "suffering from family substance abuse and schools are
feeling the burden."
Hoover says bringing counselors and psychiatrists into the schools is
an effective approach.
"This is considered a preferable model of care," she says. "The kids
show up for treatment services because they're not relying on a family
member to take them somewhere in the community."
These programs are new, but data shows that school counseling for kids
at risk for substance abuse leads to less absenteeism and better school
performance.
In Massachusetts, the schools using the Gosnold counselors report that
their students are doing better academically and emotionally.
Sarah Nadeau says that has been the case for both Maddy and her older
sister, who are leading more stable lives since they began seeing the
Gosnold counselors at school every week.
"Their day runs smoother. They can get out their anxiety while they're
in school instead of bottling it up, and then go back to class and
continue learning," she says.
K'yan Kelly is a Gosnold counselor who works at Lawrence Middle School
in Falmouth, Mass. She sees Maddy Nadeau at least once a week.
She recently increased the number of days she works at the school
because she says so many children are experiencing the chaos of
addiction, including the fear that their parents might not survive an
overdose.
"The unknown of whether a parent will live is a certain kind of
trauma," says Kelly. Also, "if you are a child who has experienced
trauma, school itself can have a lot of demands."
The counselors are also there to support the teachers, who must
navigate how to educate kids whose families are consumed by addiction.
"It's a lot. You're dealing with addiction, you're dealing with trauma,
you're dealing with loss and that's what they're up against, a lot of
these kids," says Carolyn Alves. Alves has been teaching for 17 years,
most of them at Lawrence Middle School.
She has seen an increasing number of students who are living in foster
care or have moved in with other family members because their parents
are dead, in jail, or struggling with active addiction.
"You know that what they need is a lot bigger than what you can give to
them as their teachers," she says.
Each school pays Gosnold a fee for its counselors. Private insurance
covers the student's individual sessions. If insurance won't cover the
therapy, Gosnold will absorb the cost. Last year, 17 schools on Cape
Cod used Gosnold counselors, this year there are more than 50 schools
offering these services to students throughout Massachusetts.
"I wish that more schools offered it because the epidemic is
everywhere," says Sarah Nadeau. "For a lot of these kids, school is the
only place that is stable. They get their lunch here, they get their
education here, so why not give them their support while they're here
at the school?"
This story was produced in partnership with The Hechinger Report, a
nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and
innovation in education.
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