2020 Year in Review
In the last year, the effects of virtual learning, access to school health services and heightened attention to health disparities due to COVID-19 have been at the forefront of children’s behavioral health challenges. Early childhood stressors resulting from poverty, lack of safe or stable housing, access to routine medical care or education, and language barriers can affect a child’s neurological, metabolic and immunologic systems for life. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has associated screening, early identification and linkage to services with good health outcomes for children affected by these health disparities. These actions can result in lower health risks such as teen pregnancy, poor dietary choices, inadequate physical activity, physical and emotional abuse, substance use and gang involvement. This last year has demonstrated the possible linkage programs and supports can have in fostering a behavioral health system for youth.
State Action
Over 73 bills were introduced across 28 states in 2020 related to children’s behavioral services and health care services in a school setting. Of those enacted, many related to increasing investment in training existing staff, administrators and caretakers across schools and school districts. Other laws developed new programs and frameworks that can act as a model for schools and new ways of assessing the need for school mental health resources through the creation of task forces and work groups. States also focused on appropriating the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and other relief funds to support students with mental and behavioral health needs who receive care in school-based settings.
The table below includes a few state examples of enacted legislation across these different policy areas.
2020 State Enacted Legislation
| State |
Status |
Reference - Description |
| Arizona |
2020
|
SB 1523 relates to mental health. Bars insurers that cover mental health and substance use disorder benefits from denying those benefits solely because the services were delivered in a school setting. |
| Colorado |
2020
2020
|
HB 1053 directs the state Department of Human Services to implement and operate a statewide early childhood mental health consultation program to support mental health care in early childhood settings. HB 1411 appropriates over $3 million of the $70 million in CARES Act relief funds to several executive branches including the Department of Human Services for school-based health services. |
| Florida |
2020
|
SB 7012 provides additional duties for the Statewide Office for Suicide Prevention. Develop a network of community-based programs to improve suicide prevention initiatives. The network will identify and work to eliminate barriers to providing suicide prevention services to individuals who are at risk of suicide. The network will consist of stakeholders advocating suicide prevention, including, but not limited to, not-for-profit suicide prevention organizations, faith-based suicide prevention organizations, law enforcement agencies, first responder’s emergency calls, veterans, service members, suicide prevention community coalitions, schools and universities, mental health agencies, substance abuse treatment agencies, health care providers and school personnel. |
| Iowa |
2020
|
SB 2261 relates to behavioral health services, including providing them via telehealth in a school setting. SB 2360 relates to classroom management and practitioner preparation procedures for reporting classroom violence and assaults. Area education agencies will develop, establish and distribute to all school districts evidence-based standards, guidelines and expectations for the appropriate and inappropriate response to behavior in the classroom that presents an imminent threat of bodily injury to a student or another person and for the reasonable, necessary and appropriate physical restraint of a student consistent with state board rules. |
| Maryland |
2020
|
HB 277 requires the State Department of Education, in consultation with both the departments of Health and Human Services, to develop and distribute guidelines on a trauma-informed approach to assist schools with understanding and responding to individuals with symptoms of chronic interpersonal trauma or traumatic stress. |
| Minnesota |
2020
|
SF 1 extends emergency waivers that allow the continued use of telemedicine alternatives for school-linked mental health services and school district mental health services for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. |
| New York |
2020
|
SB 7503 appropriates funds to support the Prevent Cyberbullying Initiative through activities including, but not limited to, public awareness campaigns and school counselor training. |
| North Carolina |
2020
|
SB 476 requires the state Board of Education to adopt a school-based mental health policy for personnel who work with students in grades K-12 that contains minimum requirements for school-based mental health plans, as well as a model mental health training program and suicide risk referral protocol. HB 1105 allocates $300,000 to the state Department of Social Services to establish a student health collaborative pilot program in partnership with a local education agency. |
| Ohio |
2020
|
HB 481 appropriates $6.5 million in Coronavirus Relief Funds to establish, expand and renovate programming for individuals affected by behavioral-health-related issues, specifically targeting, to the extent possible, middle- and high-school-age youth. |
| Tennessee |
2020
|
HB 2588 requires a parent educational seminar, including at least one 30-minute video on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), before a court grants a divorce. |
| Virginia |
2020
|
SB 619 requires each school board to adopt and implement policies that require teachers and other relevant school personnel, as defined by the school board, to complete a mental health awareness training or similar program at least once every 10 years. |
| Washington |
2020
2020
|
HB 2116 establishes a task force on improving institutional education programs and outcomes. The task force shall examine several issues, including goals and strategies for addressing adverse childhood experiences of students in institutional education and providing trauma-informed care. SB 6191 makes changes to the state “healthy youth survey,” which is a voluntary and anonymous survey administered every two years to students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades, to include questions related to ACEs so that their prevalence throughout the state can be better assessed and addressed. |
| West Virginia |
2020
|
HB 4773 creates a work group, whose members include the state superintendent of schools, to conduct a study of ACEs and their impact on the people of West Virginia. |