Resources for students, families at East

Caden Munderloh web editor

Beginning last year, the One World mobile medical is on campus every Monday to serve the population of students and families at Bellevue East. The clinic is one of the many resources available. Photo by Grace Walter

Mental health, physical health, sleep and nutrition are very important issues that people will have to deal with their whole lives. Teens begin to take control of their own health decisions, with less supervision from their parents. 

Resources to help with the various areas of health are provided by East for students and their families. East offers a variety of services to help student health, including physical health and mental support along with mental help programs, and nutritious lunch and breakfast. 

“Efforts are put in place to provide students with a sense of belonging, purpose, and meaning. The goals for many of these activities are to help students make connections and healthy relations with peers and adults,” Guidance Counselor Michael Chudomelka said. “These connections can have a positive impact on students in developing healthy mental health. I believe that if students can make connections with other students, adults, coaches, and/or activities.”        

It is important for students and their families to get help and East has people and programs in the school that each specialize in all the different areas a student or their family could need help in all connected through Guidance counselors. 

Guidance counselors can provide some immediate help however, guidance counselors are mental health professionals; instead guidance counselors can help with school needs and with emotional crises to an extent. but they mostly help students find the right help for their problems. They are available for meeting during the school day 

“Most of the guidance counselors are available all day, on a typical school day.  Certainly, if a guidance counselor is participating in a meeting, meeting with another student, etc., the guidance counselor would not be available at that specific time. The general process for accessing guidance counselors is to have students scan the QR code for their specific guidance counselors. These QR codes are posted in almost all classrooms and offices in the building. Scanning the QR Code will notify the guidance counselor that a student would like to meet with the guidance counselor. If a student has an emergency situation, a QR code would not be necessary,” Chudomelka said.

One of the many organization’s guidance counselors can refer someone to is the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification, or the CRCC. CRCC  provides in-school therapy and counseling options for students along with children ages 6 weeks to 21 years old. CRCC has behavioral and mental health counseling and many more programs that are tailored more towards impairments and disabilities. CRCC is even a part of Bellevue East, having a member of CRCC Amber Gillmore in East’s counseling center. Amber helps students, but can also connect people to CRCC for even more care.

According to their official website, the CRCC helps children 6 weeks to 21 years old with behavioral mental problems, physical therapy, and helps with disability care on a need driven basis so every child can get the care they need. 

Guidance counselors can also refer someone to One World. One World is a program that helps with student health, mental health, behavioral help and therapy options for students and also has a mobile unit at Bellevue East to provide medical care for students.

One World believes that everyone deserves access to the best health care possible, regardless of economic or insurance status and provides services in health care, dentistry and behavioral health. They focus on meeting the primary health care needs for all the communities they are apart of by maintaining an open-door policy providing treatment.

In addition to these outside programs to help students, East also has in-house health programs for young athletes in East’s sports programs. Incorporated into the sports programs is a clinic for physical therapy and some medical treatments run by Richard Nelson, a certified personal trainer that attends all the sports and helps all of East’s young athletes in the event of an injury and can refer them to specialists for more specialized care as well.

“I’m the one they come see when the get hurt we also can do rehabilitation in house and we have the facilities to do muscle stem, ultrasound all that kind of stuff, just like someone would have at a physical therapy clinic. We take care of the injuries and if they need to be referred out to see another physician or an orthopedic surgeon, we can facilitate that as well,” Nelson said.

Another resource available to students at East is the school nurse, Kala Brown.

“We provide acute health services here so if kids have illnesses they can get a nurse assessment and then we can determine if they need further treatment by a physician or just going home or returning to class,” Brown said.