Clark-Pleasant mental health coordinator is first in county

When Clark-Pleasant schools announced an opening for its first mental health coordinator earlier this year, Connie Poston jumped at the opportunity.

The position is not only the first at Clark-Pleasant schools, but the first among Johnson County schools. Poston has 11 years of experience in guidance and student services at Greenwood and Center Grove schools, and the opportunity to help shape how a school district looks at the mental health of its students was one of the biggest factors in her taking the job offer, she said.

“It’s exciting, I get to create what it looks like,” Poston said of her new position. “I met with counselors to assess what’s needed. I don’t want to come in and say ‘this is what we need to do.’ We need to learn what’s happening at Clark-Pleasant.”

One of Poston’s biggest priorities is to find ways to prevent student suicides, she said.

The first step in the process is state-mandated suicide-prevention training during the upcoming school year. Poston helped train staff at Center Grove High School during the 2018-19 school year so the process isn’t new to her, she said.

During training at Clark-Pleasant, Poston will use the same method she used at Center Grove, called Question, Persuade, Refer. Using the method, school staff ask students questions about what caused them to feel the way they do. The employee then persuades the student that they have something to look forward to and something to live for. After reasoning with the student, the staff member would refer that student to a counselor or an outside mental health agency, Poston said.

Poston is in charge of not only creating plans to prevent student suicides in the district, but conducting child sexual abuse training and other training for counselors and support staff, networking with mental health providers in the community and researching and applying for mental health grants. 

She’ll also manage a team of counselors and therapists. Each school in the district has a counselor, but the district also wants to add school-based therapists for the middle and high schools. Those therapists would assist students who the schools deem high-risk, meaning there is a significant chance they could harm themselves. Those therapists will start in July, Poston said. 

Clark-Pleasant schools also have Adult and Child therapists at its elementary schools, which have served split-positions since earlier this year. The split positions mean the school district employs the therapists part-time so students from families above the poverty line don’t have to pay for their services. The Adult and Child therapists at the middle and high school aren’t split positions, which is why the school-based therapists are needed, she said.

Poston’s $88,000 salary is paid for using dollars from a referendum Clark-Pleasant schools passed last year. Along with funding the district’s first police department, the referendum also sets aside a quarter of referendum dollars for mental health crisis counselors, spokesperson John Venter said.

The referendum is expected to bring in about $1.5 million per year over a period of eight years starting with the upcoming school year.

Poston talked to mental health coordinators in the state, the closest being one at Franklin Township schools, to prepare for what she might face in her position. Clark-Pleasant schools needs a strategy for their students, and along with Question, Persuade, Refer, the district can use the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale to determine how much of a suicide risk a student has, she said. 

The assessment includes questions about suicidal behavior and self-harm, suicide ideation, clinical status and activating events, or events that caused a person to become suicidal, according to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

“Let’s say a student reveals to counselors that they are harming themselves, the counselor would perform a suicide assessment,” Poston said.

“The counselor would perform the suicide assessment and if they were high risk they would notify the parents, who would come pick them up. They would refer them to an outside agency. Upon the student’s return we would want to put a safety plan in place. We’re hiring school-based therapists in the middle and high school, and one of the roles would be follow-up services for students with high risk.”

Along with suicide prevention training and hiring those school-based therapists, who will start in July, Poston is exploring what the next steps could be for addressing mental health in Clark-Pleasant schools. Those options include the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support program, which rewards students for meeting behavioral expectations in school. The option is part of an overall goal of increasing social-emotional learning in class, Poston said.

“Everyone is eager to help students and do what’s best for students,” Poston said. “We see there’s a need, we see things get in the way of students learning, like issues in a student’s life. I got the overwhelming sense that our staff wants to do what’s best for kids.”

Clark-Pleasant schools isn’t the only Johnson County district looking at increasing mental health services for its students. Franklin schools want to add a mental health coordinator sometime during the 2019-2020 school year, but they haven’t established a timeline for that hire.

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Name: Connie Poston

Position: Mental health coordinator at Clark-Pleasant schools.

Responsibilities: Training  staff in suicide prevention and helping students with mental health needs, serving as a liaison for school counselors, networking with mental health providers in the community for referral purposes and organizing mental health strategies in the district.

Previous experience: Director of guidance at Center Grove High School (2013-19), Student Services advisor at Greenwood Community Middle School (2008-12).

Salary: $88,000 per year

How it’s paid for: Money from Clark-Pleasant schools safety referendum

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