Deer Lakes, Wesley Family Services to hold joint Open House for its new school-based child and adolescent partial hospital program
Deer Lakes School District and Wesley Family Services will co-host an Open House from 9-11 a.m. on Oct. 3, 2019 to showcase their new partial hospitalization program.
The program, known colloquially as the PHP, is one of just two school-based child and adolescent partial hospital programs in Pennsylvania and is the result of a unique partnership between the school district and Wesley Family Services. It is overseen by the state’s Department of Public Welfare and the Department of Education and offers students, ages five to 18, throughout the region intensive mental health and behavioral health services that are embedded within educational programming by providing them with a half-day of education and a half-day of therapy – including individual, group and family therapy as well as psychiatric services. The average length of stay for students is between six and nine months.
Deer Lakes, which has seen a steady rise in recent years of students with significant social, emotional and behavioral health needs, first began to explore the idea of having an in-house program in 2017 when it found outside resources lacking or unavailable.
According to Deer Lakes School District Director of Special Education, Lindsay McGaughey, starting a program at Deer Lakes became a matter of necessity.
“Medical and agency professionals are placing more and more expectations for therapeutic programming on school districts and not making referrals, most likely due to a lack of outside resources and wait lists,” said McGaughey. “Unfortunately, as those resources have dried up, our students needs’ have become that much greater, so we had to find a way to meet our students’ needs in a way we hadn’t done before.”
McGaughey and her staff then began mapping out what would ultimately become the PHP. “As we were laying the foundation of how we wanted our program to function, we began to understand that there is no better measure of a school’s culture than how inclusive it is of its most vulnerable students,” said McGaughey. “That credo has guided our actions ever since.”
Deer Lakes’ top administrators studied programs and agencies throughout the state, including in neighboring counties and, in consultation with Wesley Family Services, designed a program that would provide academic rigor and access to classes while at the same time providing students with the emotional and behavioral health supports they need.
Deer Lakes has for the past several years had on-site emotional support programs and research-based social and emotional learning programs for its students. It has also hired school counselors for each building and students have full access to a district-contracted social worker and mental health liaison. Each building has been equipped with sensory rooms and the staff has been provided with de-escalation training and other methods to quell potentially explosive situations. The district has also long offered school-based out-patient therapy through partnerships with various providers and mental health supports.
However, according to McGaughey, despite additional interventions, there had been a significant increase in student referrals to the Student Assistance Program and students being referred to out of district programs for behavioral and mental health needs. That’s why she sees this new partnership as a game changer for area students.
“Wesley Family Services is among the top behavioral healthcare and therapeutic support services in the state of Pennsylvania and has an established track record of success with evidence-based programs,” said McGaughey. “We are very excited to provide our students and staff with such a valuable resource.”
Amanda Cooper, the clinical manager Wesley Family Services’ Child and Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program is similarly optimistic about the new partnership.
“We are excited and proud to partner with the Deer Lakes School District,” said Cooper. “This collaboration enables us to serve more children and families throughout Western Pennsylvania and extend our mission to empower the community by providing transformational care.”
Superintendent, Dr. Janell Logue-Belden, who along with McGaughey, helped spearhead this effort believes that mental health support should be a regular part of all school districts.
“As educators, we spend so much of our time and resources trying to meet our students’ academic and social needs that it’s easy to lose sight of their mental and emotional health needs,” said Dr. Logue-Belden. “This program helps us fill in that missing piece for our students.”
If you are interested in attending the event, please contact Amanda Cooper LCSW, Clinical Manager, Child and Adolescent Partial Hospitalization Program at [email protected].