GUELPH – The Wellington Catholic District School Board has been selected from 199 applicants as a recipient of the 2020 Share2Care Mental Health Grant.
Provided by Physical and Health Education Canada (PHE Canada) and its supporting partner, The Co-operators, the Share2Care Mental Health Grant recognized seven candidates from across the country to initiate or further advance mental health initiatives.
As the only Ontario beneficiary of Share2Care, the grant will help Wellington Catholic provide mental health resources for multilingual students.
Sarah Gammie, an ELL resource teacher at St. Peter, Holy Rosary and St. Mary Elora, identified the need for accessible resources in Ontario that discuss mental health and wellbeing in the languages of individuals new to Guelph.
“Through discussions with other teachers and school child and youth workers, it was evident that we were still in the beginning phase of having supports in place for our growing population of newcomers,” Gammie said. “I took this idea to the Wellington Catholic Mental Health Team and they helped me to build the idea of creating multilingual resources for our students and their families.”
Having been immersed in many schools within the Wellington Catholic family, Gammie saw a benefit in these resources being available board wide – enlisting the support of Sony Brar, mental health lead and manager of Student Mental Health Services with Wellington Catholic.
They estimated about 800 students will be positively impacted by the Multilingual Mental Health Initiative.
“The goal of our initiative is to ensure that all families, including our newcomer and refugee families, are being given the opportunity to access mental health resources within Wellington Catholic, and within our Guelph community,” explained Brar.
“Several of our schools have welcomed and support a large population of newcomer immigrants, refugee families, and multilingual students.”
With the award of this grant, Wellington Catholic will be able to focus on equipping teachers with the resources they need to support multilingual students who are struggling with their mental health or history of trauma.
“Multilingual students are facing mental health problems just as our English-speaking students are,” Brar said. “However, our multilingual students and families are not accessing our services in the same way as their English-speaking peers.
“We hope to address this inequality and barrier to service by promoting mental health and wellbeing for all of our students as a preventative measure, as well as providing ongoing support to students who are struggling with mental health issues.”
Resources will include strategies that promote mental health and wellbeing, teaching tools for students and families regarding anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions.
Additionally, the grant will allow for the translation of information regarding school and community resources that families can access for their wellbeing.
For more information on the Mental Health and Wellbeing Resources available within Wellington Catholic visit www.wellingtoncdsb.ca.
For more information on Share2Care visit https://phecanada.ca/programs/teach-resiliency/share2care.
