Supporting the Mental Health of Students. Because you matter.
Our Mission
Our community partnerships will promote staff awareness and increase understanding of mental health supports and resources so all students will develop life-long resiliency.
The Story of Cardinal Care Mental Health Supports:
In 2014 a need was identified to start a School Based Mental Health Program (SBMH) here in Chippewa Falls. SBMH refers to the delivery of mental health services in a school provided by an outside agency. The services are administered to students as needed as determined by a licensed therapist from an outside agency.
In the 2014-2015 school year, SBMH was started with one therapist from one agency. Our program has now grown to partner with multiple agencies and multiple therapists to help meet the needs of our students.
In 2017-2018 our district created a District and Community Leadership Team in order to brainstorm ways to bring our community therapists into our buildings more to work with our staff. This is called an Interconnected Systems Framework. The goal is to find ways to give our staff resources to use with students to help teach our students resiliency. This is where our mission statement came from. Our mission is that our community partnerships will promote staff awareness and increase understanding of mental health supports and resources so all students will develop life-long resiliency.
In 2018-2019 our district partnered with REALiving in order to offer a Student and Family Assistance Program. This is where each of our students or their family members can receive four free counseling sessions (four per family).
In 2019-2020 the CFAUSD was awarded the Project AWARE grant. This is a 5-year statewide grant that we share with the School District of La Crosse and the Lakeland Area School Consortium.
In 2021-2022 Group Health Cooperative of Eau Claire gave a generous donation to fund 4 free parent coaching sessions as part of our Student and Family Assistance Program. In 2022-2023 that expanded to also include youth coaching.
We also offer mental health resources within our school buildings such as screening, interventions, and access to school staff members. Our self-care resources focus on mental health and resiliency for staff and students.