FLORENCE, SC (WBTW) – Behavioral and mental health services are offered to students in 71 school districts across South Carolina.
Executive Director of Pee Dee Mental Health, Pat Bresnan, said five to 10 percent of students in the Pee Dee receive behavioral health services in school.
“In the schools there’s a lot of oppositional defiance disorders,” Bresnan told News13. “A lot of “behavior” problems [like] kids who take a lot of attention away from the other students in the classroom. It’s mainly those issues that our counselors come into play.”
Bresnan said there are currently 24 Pee Dee Mental Health counselors serving 51 schools in Florence, Darlington, and Marion counties.
“In the past three years we’ve hired, at the end of this month, 10 additional mental health professionals covering the schools on a one-to-one model,” he said.
Jessica Stroman’s son, Caleb, will be a fifth grader in a Florence One school in less than a week.
“He may get up, and wander around the class, and distract other children,” Stroman said about her son. “That’s an area where a social behavior counselor is needed.”
Stroman said her son started to see a behavioral health counselor in the first grade.
“Caleb has struggled with some mild, he’s mildly autistic,” she said. :He’s on the lower end of the spectrum, and he’s got ADHD. He was born at 27 weeks so we knew we were going to have developmental delays,” she explained. “His processing speed is in the ninth percentile for the country, so he struggles if you give him more than one task. If you give him one task at a time he excels, but if you hand him more than one at a time he gets confused, he freezes up, he gets agitated because he can’t process more than one task at a time.”
Stroman said Caleb’s behavioral health counselor, Dana Cockfield, has helped him tremendously both with social norms, and his behavior.
“School sometimes is over-stimulating for him, and Ms. Cockfield’s office was that safe space, and she really got to know him, and got to understand how he operated in a way that, sometimes, a school classroom teacher that’s watching over 20 kids, they can’t take that time,” she said.
Bresnan said there are several services offered in schools across the state.
“Assessments, family therapy, group therapy, individual therapy for the kids, as well as psychiatric services,” he said.
He said the Pee Dee Mental Health Center received money from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation, and the Duke Endowment.
“Locally, here, we’re going to benefit by almost one million dollars because we were able to hire a nurse practitioner who’s going to provide telehealth services in the schools in Darlington County,” said Bresnan. “And we’re going to be able to hire three additional school-based counselors.”
Stroman said the counselors help parents just as much as they help students in the classroom.
“It’s given me the tools that I need to know to deal with what we’re dealing with,” she said. “She’s [the behavioral health counselor’s] helped me better understand my child because it’s not something that the average parent knows,” she continued. “This is something they go to school for. They learn how to better equip the children for life, and better equipment parents for life because this isn’t something that’s everyday. We need the counselors for not only the children, but for the parents so that we can better parent our children. They’re a huge help.”
Stroman said she has seen a tremendous difference in her son’s behavior because of the district counselors.
“He’s kind of come out of his shell,” she said with a smile. “He understands himself a little bit better. He’s a very caring, loving, and funny child. I think that it’s kind of given him some of his confidence back so he can be a little more of himself,” he continued about her son. “It’s built him up a little bit more so that he’s not thinking that he’s always the weird one, and he’s always the one that nobody wants to talk to.”
Stroman said she’s learned from the counselors on how to approach her son, and what she can work on with him when he gets home from school.
“We are definitely much more communicative,” she said. “We talk through everything. For so long we struggled with not knowing how to get through to him, and Dana gave us those tools, and that’s a gift, it’s almost like she gave us our child back.”
