Bellevue Public Schools and CRCC, formerly known as Children’s Respite Care Center, are teaming up to bring mental health services to Bellevue East and West high schools.

BPS plans on hiring one licensed mental health therapist to serve both schools. The district hopes to eventually have one at each high school, said Kevin Mills, director of student services for BPS.

“We have been looking as a district for mental health support for all of our high school students,” Mills said.

“We were looking for different types of programming, mental health therapists — ways that we can make sure we support all the kids that might have struggles and barriers to their social and behavioral issues.”

After networking around the Metro area, Mills met with Tim Hron, the director of behavioral health at CRCC, at a school mental health conference.

While there, they discussed what services CRCC offers, and discussed the school wellness counselor position CRCC has with several other Metro area schools.

“That fit perfectly to what I wanted our schools to have,” Mills said. “That gives us an outlet for students and families to serve their needs that meet that threshold of mental health.”

Mills said after finding the CRCC school wellness counselor, the partnership will begin with a soft start in the spring.

“That person who becomes hired then starts to meet with all those kids and we can focus on them being successful in their academics,” he said.

Mills said while BPS has support in kindergarten through eighth grade in a partnership with Project Harmony through a program called Connections, there was still a need to cater to the high school students.

“We have counselors, social workers doing referrals outside, and we’ve had those pieces put in for about two years now, but nothing for high school,” Mills said.

One important aspect of this partnership, Mills said, is the school wellness counselor will meet with the students in a familiar environment.

“A lot of times, what happens is we do a referral, call the parents, we set the services all up, we send it out, then we no longer have control whether [therapy] takes place or not,” Mills said. “This doesn’t guarantee that, but it gets our hands on the piece that kids are getting therapy. That will be huge.”

In the future, Mills said he hopes to grow the program and hire a school wellness counselor for the three middle schools — Lewis and Clark, Logan Fontenelle and Mission.

Mills said he’s excited to see the high school students start to have support with mental health issues and get back on track with academics.

“To have a free service is unheard of. How they do that as a nonprofit is phenomenal,” Mills said. “I’m looking forward to knowing that we’re meeting the needs of our students.”