Porter-Starke Services to Provide Expanded Behavioral Health Care to Knox Schools

Knox Elementary and Middle School students will soon be able to get increased mental health care, thanks to a new agreement with Porter-Starke Services. Porter-Starke President and CEO Matthew Burden discussed the new program with the Knox School Board Tuesday.

He said that since he took over the position at the beginning of the year, he’s been looking for new ways to reach out to schools, and he’s starting with Knox. “What we plan to do is focus initially on the elementary and middle school by providing behavioral specialists who are going to be using evidence-based practices to work with students who are identified by the school as having any type of behavioral health need, so that’s mental health or an addictions need,” Burden explained.

Burden highlighted a couple specific practices that specialists will use. “One program is called Too Good for Drugs,” he said. “This is a social/emotional learning curriculum that focuses on substance abuse, as well as violence prevention and bullying. Each one of the modules that’s within is developed for the age that’s appropriate for the child. And really the focus in on cultivating positive outcomes. That can be goal-setting, decision-making, conflict resolution, and communication skills.”

Specialists will also use a practice called Skillstreaming. “This is from psycho-educational curricula that really focus on pro-social skills,” Burden explained. “This is dealing with feelings, alternatives to aggression, stress, even basic things like making friends, which can be difficult for some kids, as well.”

As part of the new initiative, behavior specialists will be at the schools five days a week, and they’ll make contact with parents at least once every 90 days. Burden said they will look at outcomes like grades, attendance, and the number of trips to the principal’s office.

He added that Porter-Starke is designing the program to be funded primarily through Medicaid, but that a fund may have to be set up to help students who don’t qualify. School Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart said the school corporation may be able to contribute up to $5,000 for that purpose.

Reichhart said the program will be a great help to guidance counselors as well as students, for a relatively small cost. “This was kind of generated because our guidance counselors – there’s only two of them for all the students in both of those schools, and we pull our guidance counselors now into a lot of assessment areas where they’re working with kids and have to assess all of our testing,” Reichhart said. “So what we find is that there is a tremendous need with some of our students to be able to get other services, more one-on-one or in social groups, than what we are providing.”

The Knox School Board agreed Tuesday to accept Porter-Starke Services’ proposal and move forward with a one-year contract. If the program is successful, it may be expanded to the high school.