Meeting the Need: UVM Places Mental Health Professionals in Rural Schoolsfull story >>>

There are not enough mental health professionals to support Vermont youth, particularly in rural areas. But a new program-the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools-run by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Vermont (UVM), will train and place 52 school counselors, social workers, and clinical mental health counselors in rural Vermont schools over the next five years.

The project is supported by a $3.8 million Mental Health Service Professional demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Education and addresses the state's mental health workforce shortage by building a sustainable pathway for teaching and retaining professionals in areas of high need. The effort strengthens the pipeline between Vermont's community colleges and UVM graduate programs, diversifies the workforce, and funds individuals to remain in their placement schools.

"It's really designed to be a full systemic response to a major issue," explains Anna Elliott, associate professor ofcounselingin UVM's College of Education and Social Sciences and principal investigator (PI) for the grant. "We also have pieces of the program in place that help support students to remain in rural placements after they graduate."

Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling in UVM's College of Education and Social Sciences, is principal investigator of a $3.8 million Mental Health Service Professional demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Education and addresses the state's mental health workforce shortage.

Elliott ran a similar program for five years in Montana before coming to UVM and adapting the model to the Green Mountain State. Students who remain in their placements for one year will receive a stipend to offset potential challenges such as finding a full-time position or affordable housing. Elliott also learned from her time in Montana that while some students couldn't remain in rural schools because there wasn't funding for positions, other challenges remained.

"One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students' reports that they often didn't feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment," she explains. "Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they're walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we're hoping to replicate that here."

That is why part of the collaborative's strategy is to recruit graduate students from rural communities and provide low residency options, so students don't necessarily have to uproot locations to complete their education.

"This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training," explains co-PI Danielle Jatlow, a social worker who coordinates UVM's Bachelor's ofSocial Work program. "Working with a variety of community partners, schools, and organizations in Vermont to provide an accessible and efficient post-secondary to workforce pathway is something we've been working on, and this feels really exciting."

Danielle Jatlow, a social worker who coordinates UVM's Bachelor's of Social Work program and a co-PI on the grant, says the program increases opportunities "to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training."

While the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavioral Surveys have shown concerning levels of depression and anxiety among middle school and high school students in Vermont, there remains a dearth of mental health professionals. In 2023, the Vermont State Workforce Development Board estimated the state needs 230 providers to meet rising demand. With the new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, UVM graduate students will provide a minimum of 25,000 clinical hours to rural populations each year.

"This initiative not only addresses immediate needs by connecting communities with trained support but also establishes a foundation for long-term solutions in our rural settings," said Vermont's Interim Secretary of Education Zoie Saunders. "Addressing student mental health is a key priority for the Agency of Education and collaboration with partners such as the University of Vermont maximizes our impact where it is needed most. This partnership showcases the power of collaboration to benefit the young people of Vermont."

The project partners with the Vermont Agency of Education and aligns with the state's community schools movement, which uses public schools as hubs for students and their families to receive integrated supports. By locating behavioral health, nutrition, and other human services at schools, it reduces potential access barriers such as transportation and increases the likelihood that caregivers and students receive the services they need to thrive.

"That is actually part of the reason we will be placing clinical students, in particular, in the schools, not just school counseling and social work because they're able to offer services to the parents and to the families," explains Elliott. "In rural communities where there's a low number of mental health professionals to begin with, and then there's also stigma, not to mention cost all of those things that are getting in the way of people seeking out services, putting those services in the schools creates a less stigmatized and accessible options for rural families to use."

UVM faculty, including co-PIs Robin Hausheer, associate professor of counseling, and Lance Smith, associate professor of counseling, will begin pitching the program to rural schools and hope to begin placing graduate students this semester. A pilot version of the project is already underway in schools in Cabot and Vergennes and yielding promising results.

"There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise," Elliott says. "So that feels like everything."

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