Elgin Township joining forces with schools, nonprofits on youth mental health programs

The Elgin Township 708 Mental Health Board is providing $437,000 for a pilot program to provide preventive measures and early intervention care at five schools in Elgin Area School District U-46.

“This all started with a meeting I had with U-46 Superintendent Suzanne Johnson and others about six months ago, and the mental health board looking for a way to address youth mental health, with kids and teens seeming to face more and more issues,” Elgin Township Supervisor Vern Tepe said.

In addition to reports about a nationwide youth mental health crisis, Tepe said what spurred the program’s creation was troubling information compiled by the nonprofit Family Service Association of Greater Elgin.

Its data showed there were 89 youth crisis calls in 2025 from the schools that feed into Larkin High School in Elgin, with one in four leading to psychiatric hospitalizations, he said.

Armed with that information, Tepe started meeting twice a month with U-46 officials and other organization representatives to put together a program they hope will start addressing some of those mental health problems.

The one-year investment partners U-46 with the Boys and Girls Club of North Central Illinois and Family Service Association of Greater Elgin.

Leatrice Satterwhite, U-46 assistant superintendent of equity and innovation, said planning sessions will take place in early September with the intention of having the effort up and running by the end of the month.

Boys and Girls Club CEO Cathy Russell said schools involved in the effort are Century Oaks, Highland and Harriet Gifford elementary schools and Kimball Middle School, all of which are part of the Larkin network, and Channing Elementary School, which is part of the Elgin High School network. The club already provides after-school programming at those schools.

New mental health programs will also be provided at the Boys and Girls Club clubhouse in South Elgin, Russell said.

The Boys and Girls Club is receiving $100,000 for tier one prevention and after-school programs and for putting together an initiative with U-46’s Alignment Collaborative for Education through which high school students will be trained and paid to mentor younger students on mental health issues.

The funding also will be used to hire more staff, with the hope of bringing the ratio from one staff member for every 15 children to 1-to-7 or less, Russell said.

Efforts will focus on emotional and social learning, including journaling, which gets children thinking and talking about their feelings and then putting them into writing, she said. “Sound baths,” which use southing vibrations and tones to help participants relax, will also be used, she said.

Family Service Association will receive $337,000 for tier two and three mental health counseling, intensive family therapy and psychiatric care.

Satterwhite said that while tier one programs are geared for all students, tier two involves working with small groups and individual families of at-risk students and tier three is for one-on-one care.

Janeth Barba, CEO of the Family Service Association of Greater Elgin, said the funding will allow the organization to bridge the gap between schools, homes and clinical care.

“With 24/7 crisis response, mobile de-escalation and dedicated individual therapy, we are ensuring that our highest-need families receive compassionate, immediate and ongoing treatment without barriers,” Barba said.

The programming being funded by the township is transformational, she said, in that it is merging prevention and care across grade levels in a collaborative way.

Satterwhite agreed, noting that U-46 has a long history of working with the association and that bringing the Boys and Girls Club into the fold will assist the district care coordination teams already in place.

According to a news release, the program will track attendance and behavioral data with the primary goals being to improve school attendance and student grades while potentially reducing psychiatric hospitalizations.

If things go well, the district will look into expanding the program to other schools, Satterwhite said.

“We’d hope to involve other organizations and other townships,” Satterwhite said.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The (Elgin) Courier-News.