Additional mental health support on hand for Annunciation’s return to school

NINA MOINI: Tomorrow, Annunciation students will return to school. That's three weeks after a shooter killed two students and injured 21 others during a back-to-school mass. One organization providing support for kids as they make the transition back is Washburn Center for Children in Minneapolis. Joining me now to talk more about their efforts are CEO Craig Warren and Beth Dahline, a therapist and chief operating officer at the center. Thank you both for your time this afternoon.

CRAIG WARREN: Well, thanks for having us.

NINA MOINI: We've been talking--

BETH DAHLINE: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: --thank you so much-- throughout the show, giving people updates on everything that's happened in the last few weeks. And your work is ongoing all year. Obviously, you're stepping up in this moment of need. But Craig, for those who don't know, would you tell us a little bit more about just the year-round work that the Washburn Center does?

CRAIG WARREN: Sure. Washburn Center for Children has been serving the Twin Cities community for over 142 years, and our mission really is about nurturing the well-being and full potential of all children and their families through transformative mental health care. And we do that-- our real focus is on psychotherapeutic services that are culturally responsive and trauma-informed, and delivered in a community-based fashion. So we have our therapists embedded in schools around the Twin Cities. We have three locations where people come to us. We also deliver some services in people's homes or wherever in the community they need us.

NINA MOINI: OK. Beth, I imagine a lot of places that offer services like yours were wondering, what can we do in this moment? Would you tell us a little bit about how you got connected with Annunciation, and what types of services are going to be available when students do return tomorrow? Some of them?

BETH DAHLINE: Yeah, thank you. So we were connected due to outreach on the Annunciation side and brought into conversations. So we will continue to provide support, being friendly faces, able to be a check-in point or a stopping point. If someone just needs a moment, adult or child, staff member or parent, to check in, to offer support, to breathe together, to acknowledge the complexity at hand.

NINA MOINI: And Beth, one of the things that was sad, really, to hear about after this happened a few weeks ago were how many other communities around the country were reaching out to folks here in Minneapolis, and in Annunciation, who had been through similar mass shooting school-related incidents. I wondered if the services that you provide, is that something that you all were familiar with, a mass shooting in a school, or is this something that you have also sought help from other communities to try to navigate?

BETH DAHLINE: Yeah, this is a first for our organization and for the Twin Cities. Although we have had other traumas and community violence, school shooting is the first. There are, unfortunately, other schools and organizations that have offered their learnings to that, and we're very thankful for them to share that on the national level.

NINA MOINI: And Craig, I understand that a local radio station, myTalk 107.1, hosted a fundraiser that's raised nearly $20,000 for your organization to provide support and services to families at Annunciation. Would you tell us a little bit about how those funds could be used? Because I think everybody knows it's going to be a long road for individual families in the school, in terms of providing helpful mental health services for a really long period of time, if necessary, for all the students who need it. So would you just describe how you're starting to disperse those funds?

CRAIG WARREN: Yeah, we're really starting with centering ourselves around the needs of the school and around the needs of the family. I think you mentioned earlier that the students were going to be coming back into the school, actually, tomorrow. So our initial focus really has been on supporting the school staff and the educators, and the folks in the staff, in terms of educating them on some of the things that the children might be experiencing or displaying with that, really providing support to them.

So one of the things we talk about is, take care of yourself first so that you can then take care of the kids in your life. So really helping the educators and the staff in the school prepare themselves around what they might experience with the students, what's going on for them, so as the students come back in the environment, they can be prepared for that.

And then obviously as we move forward, we're really working very closely with the school as the children come back into that environment, to figure out what needs they identify, what needs the staff and the school identify, from a mental health perspective, going forward. And as Beth mentioned, our community hasn't experienced something like on this scale before, so really taking advantage of our deep experience with trauma and a lot of the evidence-based practices we use, and adapting and evolving that based on the needs of the Annunciation community.

NINA MOINI: And one of the things that is so tough, too-- and Beth, I'll give this question to you, if you don't mind-- earlier in the show, my colleague Dana Ferguson was reporting from a meeting of state senators where parents were talking, from students at Annunciation, about the horrors that their kids have witnessed and how they are still so deeply impacted, that it's only been a few weeks.

I wonder about the stress that families might feel thinking, on top of everything that's happened, now a student may get behind in learning, and is that causing further anxiety for students? I guess, understanding you're not treating individual students involved here, how do you go about working with a family to decide, is it time to go back to school? How does that work?

BETH DAHLINE: Yeah. So I appreciate the question, and I think it is very individual how the response to trauma shows up in each of us. Even within a family, we know there's siblings, parents who are teachers-- it's going to show up in everyone differently at different times. And so having supports in place, so everyone has a place to check in, is really critical to making the best plan for each individual at any given time, I think is one way of going about that.

NINA MOINI: Sure. And Craig, we obviously also want to talk about all of the many adults who have been impacted by this tragedy, and school teachers, staff members, who are navigating this time as well and trying, I'm sure, to lead by example in whatever ways they can. I know that your services deal mostly with young people and students, but what types of supports have you heard of, or are you also going to be providing for adults in the room?

CRAIG WARREN: Well, we're also providing support to the adults. So a lot of our work we do is with kids, but if you're dealing with kids, whoever the adults are in that environment, whether it be in whatever their family situation is, or their caregivers, or in the school environment, really have a disproportionate impact on the environment a child was in and can be a big impact in terms of the mental wellness of that child.

So actually, quite a bit of our work is around with adults understanding what's going on with them, and that may be referring them to other supports that they may need so they can do their work so they can show up for their kids. It's also around educating them around things that may show up with their kids with that, and on educating them on the impact of how you show up with your child, in terms of the questions you ask, in terms of how you talk about your own feelings or emotions with the child, will impact how the child approaches that and their willingness to engage in that.

So while we're not directly focused on adults per se, in terms of providing services to them with the work we do around the caregiving unit, around the family unit, there is quite a bit of time spent on supporting adults in terms of supporting their children.

NINA MOINI: Mm-hmm. And just lastly, Beth, I know most schools probably would really love to have more mental health support throughout the year, more staff to be able to deal with less children so that they're able to really focus in on the people that they need to focus in on. Do you have a sense for how long supports like yours, or just yours in particular, will be available on site? Just having that level of interaction with everybody in that level of support?

BETH DAHLINE: Yeah, I think it will be a decision made with the school and what they're seeing, and I think Washburn Center is hoping to be there as an opportunity and option for kids and families for years to come.

NINA MOINI: All right. Thank you both, Beth and Craig, so much for your time. Really appreciate you.

CRAIG WARREN: Yep, you're welcome.

BETH DAHLINE: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: Thank you. That was Washburn Center for Children CEO Craig Warren and therapist and chief operating officer Beth Dahline.