A $1.7 million grant from Ohio’s opioid settlement fund is set to continue a vital program aimed at addressing youth mental health concerns, focusing on building resilience among students and preventing future mental health crises. The grant will extend a program that has been providing crucial mental health support since 2022, specifically targeting resilience development in 30 school districts across the region.
The program is administered by Dayton Children’s Hospital, which has placed student resilience coordinators in schools to work directly with students. These coordinators provide one-on-one support, helping students develop resilience skills, such as building relationships, learning healthy coping mechanisms, and fostering personal confidence. The goal is to equip students with the tools they need to handle stress and challenges, potentially preventing mental health issues from escalating.
The grant from the One Ohio Recovery Foundation — part of the opioid lawsuit settlement — ensures that the program can continue despite previous funding running out. Without this additional support, the program would have been significantly scaled back, reducing the number of districts from nine to just four coordinators, said Sue Fralick, Director of the Center for Emotional Well-Being at Dayton Children’s.
Fralick emphasized the importance of prevention: “Our hope is to be able to fund the prevention side so that we can stop things before they get worse,” she said. “Prevention programming is not billable to insurance or Medicaid.” She added that, by focusing on resiliency, students are equipped to face both current and future stressors.
Angelique Bailey, a resilience coordinator at Archbishop Alter High School, explained that teachers often refer students to the program when they notice signs of academic struggles, lack of participation, or past trauma. The coordinators work closely with students and their families to assess their emotional well-being and create individualized care plans.
The program relies on the seven Cs of resiliency characteristics — a model derived from the work of Kenneth Ginsburg, author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens. These characteristics are: competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, and control. Coordinators assess which traits students need to strengthen and use those to develop tailored care plans, with a focus on the two areas where each student could use the most help.
Bailey reflected on the personalized approach: “We pick the two [Cs] that they need the most help in,” she said. “Then, we sit down and start to really build rapport. The care plan gives the goals that we should be working on, but I have to get to know them first. And it’s a beautiful journey, it really is.”
This program is a vital step in addressing the growing youth mental health crisis, offering students the tools they need to cope with trauma and stress, and providing a preventative approach to mental health challenges before they worsen.
