Community Mental Health Follow Up Thank you to the parents that attended the Parent Night to Review AMS Student Well-Being Data. Thank you to Siler McCraw and Megan Smith, an Anser parent, for facilitating and helping so much to gather and process this data alongside our Community for Youth partners. Here is the slide show for those that were not able to attend.

We asked two of the attendees, Lindsay Biedel and AnnMarie Johnson to share some of their takeaways from the night.

“I appreciated having a chance to hear results of the data collected from Anser students in regards to their mental health and how supported they feel in all aspects of their lives. I'm not surprised that middle school kids at Anser reported feeling more supported at school than teenagers throughout the district (thank you amazing middle school teachers and administrators!) but there is still so much we can do as a parent and school community to make sure our kids have connections to caring adults and other students who they can be their authentic selves with. I appreciate that the approach is to uncover gaps and identify specific areas we can focus on to help the kids in OUR school community.  I'm so thankful for our Anser middle school community and that we have organizations like Communities for Youth to help us gather data on what kids are experiencing in order to help us pinpoint where we can do better for our kids and help them navigate this complicated time in their lives.”

- Lindsay Biedel 

"I am so grateful for the Anser Community's participation in the Communities for Youth survey and for the information and resources the team at Community's for Youth provides to our school, city and state. Listening to the empirical and quantitative data about the social and emotional wellbeing of our students at Anser is encouraging and helpful in developing policy and purpose for our school. I left the conversation encouraged about the steps all adults in our community (not just school administrators) can take to help our young people address the mental health crisis our communities are facing right now. THANK YOU to Megan Smith, her team at CFY, and to the Anser administrators for taking advantage of this important resource in our community!" 

- AnnMarie Johnson 

More Opportunities for Mental Health Updates Available

https://www.mentallycovered.org/

Upcoming Events:

Tonight! Join The Speedy Foundation and the Children's Home Society of Idaho at Meridian Middle School on February 8th for a suicide prevention parent learning opportunity. Registration is not required. 

https://www.mentallycovered.org/blogs/events/parentlearningopportunity?mc_cid=128cbbb74b&mc_eid=b5bcc1bfd4 

Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) teaches you how to identify, understand, and respond to signs of mental health and substance use challenges among children and adolescents ages 6-18. Learn more about this free training that will be located in Truckee, CA here.