The Roanoker - July/August 2021 - 38

" Kids look at other kids and think: Those kids keep it all
together better than me and I don't know why. They don't
understand that their trauma is to blame. "
Schools address need
Even before the pandemic, Roanoke City Public Schools had begun to expand its mental health
offerings, understanding that if children were not well, they could not learn.
In 2019, licensed professional counselor Decca Knight was hired as the system's first-ever
coordinator of trauma-informed care. That same year Laurie Seidel was brought on as coordinator
for mindfulness programs - providing resources for students and teachers.
During the 2020/2021 school year, RCPS sent out a survey to assess students' social emotional
needs. " We wanted to find out what are their strengths, what areas do they need to grow, " says
Knight. " We want every student to have a profile, so we're able to follow them. "
Survey results will also be used to design curricula that meet students' specific needs, she says.
Last year, the school system also began creating mental health teams at every school, which
included trauma and mindfulness coaches, so student care could be coordinated, teachers could
be trained onsite and programs could be crafted to answer the particular profile of each school.
That approach is attracting notice across the state, Knight says. " Putting all of those initiatives
in that interwoven framework is key, " she explains.
Superintendent Verletta White agrees. " Those wraparound services are so critically important
to student learning that we're pushing that support in every single one of our schools. "
If there was ever doubt that schools were integral to student well-being, the separation of
children during the last year-and-a-half from peers, teachers, and other services they receive in
the school setting has put an end to it.
" It's become incredibly clear that school is really important to kids, " Adams-Vanke says.
Understanding childhood trauma
In the not-so-distant past, mental health services for kids kicked in once there was a diagnosis
of autism, attention deficit disorder, addiction, anxiety or schizophrenia.
Those diagnoses are still on the books, still valid and vexing.
Over the past two decades, however, there's been a growing awareness of another factor that
can have serious impacts on mental and physical health: trauma.
The CDC reports that 17% of the population has experienced significant trauma in childhood;
66% has experienced some form of childhood trauma. That childhood trauma (violence in the
home, having an alcoholic parent, being the child of divorced parents, for example) can lead to
lifelong anger issues, suicidal tendencies, depression. Also heart disease, lung cancer and Type 2
diabetes. Trauma, studies are now showing, can actually re-code a person's genetic makeup.
" Developmental trauma, or trauma experienced during our formative years, was not really a part
of our narrative in mental health until six or seven years ago, " says Knight, who began digging
into the science of developmental trauma's effect on mental health 10 years ago, after working as
a school counselor but finding the therapies she was using ineffective.
" Those were speaking to their upstairs brain, " Knight remembers. " This is a lot more
deep-seated. "
38 JULY/AUGUST 2021
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