Hartford’s response to 12/14 took two distinct paths. Ironically, the path fraught with contention and strife — a package of stricter gun laws — was chosen quickly, by a determined governor working with the advantage of legislative majorities in the state House and Senate and political tailwinds emerging from the storm of shock and sorrow following the Sandy Hook tragedy. The second path leading to an overhaul of the state’s mental health infrastructure and services for youth and children presented far fewer political obstacles, yet has been far more difficult to formulate and launch. Apparently, it is easier to restrict something than to promote something.

Late last week, Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families released the first draft of a report it plans to deliver to the General Assembly next month with suggestions on how to fix the state’s fragmented and inefficient system of delivering mental health services to children and their families. DCF calculates that roughly 156,000 of Connecticut’s children, about 20 percent, have mental health needs that could be helped with appropriate treatment. Their parents, however, struggle to locate and access those treatments.

More than a year ago, the legislature’s Committee on Children heard from parents from Newtown about the endless frustrations they face in getting access to appropriate mental health services for children. While their plight has won support in the form of millions of dollars in temporary funding to underwrite mental health services over the next couple of years, the hard work to bring focus and efficiency in the delivery of services to those children most in need of help has just begun.

The DCF report calls for standardized periodic mental health screening for all children and notes that schools are uniquely positioned to help provide early identification and intervention and to equalize access to mental services throughout the state. It calls for the expansion and financing of school-based mental health services, including licensed clinicians. This recommendation comes, coincidently, just as Newtown’s Board of Education is poised to vote as soon as its next meeting September 16 on whether to establish a school-based health clinic at the middle school.

The clinic envisioned for the middle school would provide immediate medical care, education, and information useful to students and their families, including a medical / billing assistant. Its quick availability, however, as an access point for mental health services, staffed with a licensed clinical social worker, would enable the Newtown’s School District to take the next step beyond the temporary, ad hoc measures set up after 12/14 to a state-supported, consistent, standardized, and accessible source of mental health services. We encourage the school board not to hesitate any longer and to authorize the school-based health center at Newtown Middle School, and the legislature to follow through with the implementation of DCF’s recommendations.