Last fall, public school students across the state were given workshops and meetings to discuss bullying prevention and safe social media use, as part of a new program the state is rolling out to provide mental health services to more students across the state.
The state’s services plan, known as the New Jersey Statewide Support Services for Students (NJ4S) program, was developed in response to a “sharp increase” in rates of depression, anxiety and stress among New Jersey teens and young adults, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since launching at the start of last school year, the region’s “hub-and-spoke” model has sought to provide enhanced mental health services through 15 hubs, or treatment service centers, across the state.
Now, state lawmakers have signaled their continued support for the program by allocating $43 million to it in the latest state budget, keeping its current funding levels, said Christine Norbutt-Beyer, commissioner of the state Department of Children and Families, which runs the NJ4S program.
“I think it’s been very effective,” Norbat Beyer said of the program in a recent interview with New Jersey Spotlight News. “We’ve had very positive feedback reporting back to us from schools and districts that have used the NJ4S services,” she said.
Is NJ4S missing the point?
But some school officials say the state’s plan includes programs already offered in schools. The new statewide program is supposed to do more to address the traumatic events some students face at home that affect their performance in school, former school officials told New Jersey Spotlight News.
Advocates and school officials also say the public needs to know more about the services provided through the state program and are calling for a review of how $43 million allocated to the program in last year’s budget was spent. Lawmakers allocated $43 million for the NJ4S program in the 2024 budget and another $43 million for the 2025 budget, which began July 1. Advocates and school officials are calling for a review of the $43 million from last year’s budget.
“We’re willing to look at the 4S model more broadly as a potential model for it to work, but we need data to substantiate that,” said David Aderhold, superintendent of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, “and we tried to receive data on how the program is working systematically on a hub-by-hub basis, but there didn’t seem to be any long-term data available.”
Under the state’s current model, each hub has a director who serves schools, libraries, community centers, social service agencies, and faith-based organizations, a mental health crisis prevention specialist, and mental health counselors. Outside contractors are hired to run each hub, and each hub also has a community advisory board that includes students, parents, business owners, and faith leaders.
Three service levels
According to a website introducing and describing the network, the state’s plan’s purpose is to serve as a prevention program and is not designed to address serious mental health concerns or crisis situations. Additionally, the program is specifically designed to avoid duplicating existing services and utilize the limited pool of mental health professionals available in New Jersey, according to a news release issued by the state in April 2023.
The hub offers three tiers of services: tier one services are available to all students, parents and school staff across the state and include workshops on substance use, conflict resolution and lifestyle changes to improve mental health.
The second tier is for students who need services for issues such as substance use prevention, suicide prevention and pregnancy prevention. These services are provided to small groups of students. The top level, or third tier, are individualized services provided to students who are determined by school officials to need short-term clinical intervention. This includes a “psychosocial evaluation” of the student to determine whether they need a psychiatric referral, outpatient treatment, or long-term treatment.
“The beauty of this program is that it allows more young people to access services that they wouldn’t have had access to without it.” — Diane Travers, Director of the Essex County Hub
Additionally, Tier 2 and 3 services will be provided to middle and high school students participating in the state’s programs, their parents, and school teachers. To receive these services, staff designated as NJ4S representatives must submit an application, according to the state. Once an application is submitted, assigned hub staff will meet with the school representative to determine if a referral to a mental health provider outside of the state’s programs is necessary.
By the numbers
As of early July, Norbut-Beyer said 161,006 people had attended workshops and gatherings offered under Tier 1. There have been 1,582 meetings for students who need preventive mental health services offered under Tier 2. There have also been more than 5,000 meetings for students who need short-term intervention services, including referrals to psychiatrists or outpatient treatment centers, Norbut-Beyer said.
“I don’t know if a one-year review was planned, but the data is available,” Norbud Beyer said of issuing a report after the program is implemented. “We continue to collect data. [the data]”I hold advisory committee meetings across the state for NJ4S where we share data on a regular basis as engagement grows throughout the year,” she said.
Of the 1,130 schools eligible to apply for prevention and brief intervention services through the program, 736 have provided the state with contact information to access the state’s website to submit applications and view available services, according to a recent state advisory committee report. Of those 736 schools, 258 have submitted applications for prevention and brief intervention services, according to the report.
The program has received support from some mental health experts, including Diane Travers, who oversaw five school-based youth-serving programs before becoming director of the Essex County site.
“The beauty of this program is that it gives more young people access to services that they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise,” said Travers, who also serves as senior director of programs for Family Connections, the nonprofit selected by the state last year to staff and operate the Essex County site.
Funding issues
Still, some therapists, including John Paul Simon of NJ4S Bergen, point out the challenges of addressing the state’s youth mental health crisis.
“Demand will always outstrip resources, and it’s no secret that many school districts are losing funding that goes directly to resources to support students in school buildings,” Simon said, noting that some COVID-19-related funding has dried up.
Because of NJ4S’s high student-to-clinician ratio, individual clinical services tend to be short-term: Simon said clinicians work with students for about six to eight weeks, teaching them coping skills and connecting them to other forms of support.
“This (NJ4S) was promoted as a big effort to create a system where mental health supports are there, but they’re not.” – David Aderhold, Superintendent, West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District
“I tell therapists, ‘You need to start thinking about the breakup before you go on that first date,’ which means starting to think about the full picture of resources and well-being of this student and their family,” said Simon, who serves as the Bergen Hub’s associate director.
But prevention and brief intervention services — more sophisticated supports — offered at the mid and upper levels of the state plan are not available to middle and high schools, which already have school-based youth services programs. The latter programs have been in place since the late 1980s and are currently in 86 schools, according to Cassidy Grom, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Children and Families. School-based youth services programs provide services such as mental health and career development services on school facilities.
Another Plan
The state’s original plan was to end school-based youth service programs and move to a hub-and-spoke model by June 30, 2023. After backlash from school officials, lawmakers and advocates for school-based youth service programs, the state announced in May 2023 that it would no longer make cuts to these programs.
Still, Aderhold and several other activists and school officials continue to point out multiple problems with the state’s NJ4S program and argue it could provide more mental health support to students who desperately need it.
“The tier one and two services that they’re talking about are often not what we need. We’re doing those on the ground and in the schools,” Aderhold said. “It’s tier three where we really need direct assistance,” he said.
Mental health experts, including Gary Nelson, also said state programs weren’t properly communicated to school districts and administrators. Many of the programs relied on the state building relationships with schools, rather than leveraging existing relationships, said Nelson, executive director of the Center for Family and Community Empowerment and owner of Nelson Counseling LLC. Through the nonprofit small business, Nelson aims to provide school-based youth service programs and mental health counseling to students in six school districts.
Overall, Nelson said the state’s program will be a good referral service for people who are “on the ground” providing direct services.
“I don’t think it’s a good model for direct services because 80 to 90 percent of it is relationships,” Nelson said. “If you have to meet with a counselor who comes to your school once every two weeks or on an irregular schedule, and you don’t know who that counselor is or they’re not in your school, it makes it a lot harder to make a connection.”
For Aderhold, current concerns about the state’s program date back to when it was first introduced in 2022.
“We’ve never had a landscape study or a real discussion about what’s needed on the ground,” he said. “This NJ4S was promoted as a massive effort to create a system where we could say there’s mental health support, but that’s not what’s happening.”
—Editor’s note: Hannah Gross contributed reporting.
