Peoria Public Schools District 150 is supporting students’ mental health with long-term care from an outside service.
Cartwheel is a Massachusetts-based virtual mental health provider in partnerships with over 200 school districts around the country. Juliana Chen, Cartweel’s Chief Medical Officer, says the company prides itself on getting mental health care to kids and their families without a waitlist.
Chen said the company achieves this through careful staffing.
“There’s been a significant pediatric mental health crisis since before COVID, but it was exaggerated and increased since the time of COVID,” said Chen. “We partner exclusively with school districts so that school counselors, teachers, and parents, when they identify a concern about a child, they can refer them to Cartwheel.”
Bria Scott is a school social worker at Peoria Public Schools. Scott said social workers like her are more equipped to help students handle an emergency mental health crisis in the moment, but a service like Cartwheel enables longer-term care.
“Unfortunately, we’re not available during the summer or when school is off, holidays, things like that. So if there was a crisis or an emergency, those things can be missed because we are not equipped to be readily available 24/7,” said Scott.
Cartwheel includes scheduling that covers some afterschool hours until 8 p.m. Scott said the service is crucial to removing some of the barriers she sees between mental health care and the students at the school buildings she serves.
“The barriers of health insurance and things like that, Cartwheel has stepped in and made that barrier eliminated for our children,” said Scott. “So it’s been a tremendous help in the Peoria school setting.”
Chen said the organization is in-network for all major insurance providers, but it also includes a built-in financial aid fund to temporarily support care for uninsured children and their families. She said the program was designed with rapid access and equitable access as priorities.
“It’s really important to us that, if a school counselor or parent or teacher identifies a need, that Cartwheel can really be there to support that child and family with no barriers,” said Chen.
For Peoria Public Schools students, a referral for Cartwheel starts with talking with one of the school’s mental health professionals. After that, the school contacts the child’s legal guardian and gets permission to use the service. Scott said the service takes over from there.
Scott works in two different school buildings in the Peoria district. She says, in the last school year alone, around 20 students have been referred and are receiving virtual mental health care from Cartwheel.
Scott said she doesn’t know where the schools would be without the additional support.
“At the end of the day, we’re all in it for our children and that’s who we’re here for,” she said. “And we remember that they may be doing the digital hard work, but we’re doing the leg work and just working together as a team, a village.”
