A Fort Worth mental health nonprofit is expanding trauma and grief care into schools.
Soar, the nonprofit branch of real estate investment firm M2G Ventures, has launched the Tarrant County Trauma and Grief Collaborative in partnership with the Dallas-based Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute. The organizations will aim to train 180 school and community clinicians over the next three years on how best to handle childhood grief, with the goal of serving 1,440 children.
“Our goal is that this investment into our school-aged children is going to be the first of many for a lot of people to bring in the resources that they need to deal with situations that they’re put in, unfortunately, on a daily basis,” said Jessica Miller Essl, co-president of M2G Ventures.
Soar is planning to raise about $1 million during those three years, Miller Essl said, to support the work of the Meadows Institute’s Trauma and Grief Center. The collaborative has not yet chosen which school districts to work within and is currently having conversations with local education leaders, Miller Essl said.
The Trauma and Grief Center has what executive director Julie Kaplow describes as a coalition of hospitals as well as physicians nationwide who have been trained in proper trauma and grief support of children and adolescents.
The Tarrant Collaborative differs slightly, she said, because of a local partner’s involvement and the “specific way” the Dallas-based institution plans on working directly with clinicians and counselors.
“The support that we’ve seen from Soar has been unmatched in terms of them being so motivated and determined to ensure that all 180 school and community clinicians across Tarrant County get the training that they need,” Kaplow said.
About 78,000 Tarrant County young people ages 10 to 19 experience the death of a loved one each year, according to a local needs assessment conducted by the Meadows Institute. About 58,000 youths in that age range are exposed to multiple traumatic events.
Trauma and bereavement in kids are often overlooked or confused with depression, according to the Child Mind Institute. Symptoms include problems eating, sleeping, anger, concentration, or behavioral issues like poor self-control or trouble forming relationships.
Nationally, one in 12 children will experience the death of a parent or sibling before turning 18, according to the National Alliance for Children’s Grief.
The Tarrant Collaborative looks to address that through evidence-based interventions, Kaplow said. Counselors will be trained in Trauma and Grief Component Therapy for teens with histories of trauma and loss, and Multidimensional Grief Therapy for youth who’ve experienced the death of a loved one.
“The majority have had almost no training in how to address grief,” Kaplow said of school clinicians.
Supporting kids going through these experiences will help improve their grades and truancy rates, and possibly curtail violent behavior, Kaplow said.
“The idea is that when we can use this as proof of concept, our hope would be to be able to expand this model to other school districts across the state,” she added.
Miller Essl noted that Soar is in a constant search to better and further understand mental illness, and partnerships like the one with the Meadows Institute are part of that effort.
The hope from the Fort Worth nonprofit is to make a tangible impact on future generations.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but you never know when you’re pulling on the beginning of a string,” Miller Essl said. “I hope that this is the ripple effect that our community needs in order to get behind making sure that our kids have the right resources when it comes to trauma and grief and other mental health needs.”
Ismael M. Belkoura is the nonprofit editor for the Fort Worth Report. His position is supported by a grant from North Texas Community Foundation. Contact him at ismael.belkoura@fortworthreport.org.
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