Stand for Health Freedom has been tracking the rapid expansion of School-based health services in schools for the last several years. Mental health services are some of the most invasive, and supporters of school-based healthcare are justifying the exclusion of parents from their children’s healthcare (and mental health treatment) by claiming reduced time off work and increased productivity for the parent and child. HB 1574 is a bill we knew was in the pipeline and it has officially arrived in Indiana.
The synopsis of the bill states, “establishes the school based family mental health pilot program to provide mental health services to students in school based settings, through a partnership between a [contracted] health care provider and a school [or school district], that allow the student’s family to participate in the services remotely.”
The bill tries to cover up the fact that parents are not welcome to attend the appointments in-person by suggesting they MAY tune in remotely. But the bill doesn’t require that a parent be present in order for the student to receive services. Nor does it require the parent to be notified and given the option 100% of the time. Parents also have no ability to choose the provider their child sees nor do they have the ability to insist on a provider that matches their family’s values.
Pro-family advocates know that healthcare has no place in schools. Schools are not situated to oversee and govern these healthcare relationships and it will cause more problems than it will help. We also know that if therapists are unearthing mental health problems without parental engagement, the child will not receive the support they need, and there will be more harm than benefit. If a school needs to provide wrap-around support to the child, that can be initiated by the parent – what’s unacceptable is the school providing the main support while asking for wrap-around support from parents. Parents should be the drivers of mental health treatment, not the schools.
We have spoken with medical doctors who are concerned that schools getting into healthcare territory will guarantee that the care provided is at the lowest level (because a school’s primary function is to educate children, not treat medical problems). If schools across the state adopt these healthcare programs, the most accessible level of healthcare will be of the lowest quality. We should not settle for reduced standards in healthcare. Schools have already fallen short of standards time and time again, being forced to lower the bar further each time they do. Our children are already suffering from the poor quality of the standardization of education; let’s not standardize the lowest quality of healthcare, too.
What’s worse, it seems no one learned their lesson during Covid about treating everyone rather than only those who need it – Why should we turn our schools into mental health institutions rather than keeping schools as a place for education? We don’t need to bring healthcare into schools, we need to protect both places separately to increase the standards in both environments. School should be a place where kids can focus on creating their future, not be forced to sit and stew on their present circumstances. School is a place to dream, not a place to focus on their difficulties. We owe our children an environment to learn without the burdens of the world being placed on their shoulders.
Many advocates of healthcare expansion in schools justify the erosion of the school day by saying it will have a positive impact on the economy when parents miss less work. But bringing mental health services into schools under the guise of increasing the parent’s work productivity sends the message to kids that their wellbeing is not their parent’s top priority. It also sends the message to parents that they’re not needed because the nanny school will become the parent while they’re away. Policies that place the school between the parent and their child erode the parent-child relationship. And, if the economy is so bad that parents can’t afford to leave work to provide healthcare for their children, lawmakers need to fix the economy, not replace the parents with state-provided services.
Mental health problems in children will only get worse if parents play an even smaller role in their children’s healthcare. And parents will become even less engaged with their children if lawmakers and schools tell them their presence isn’t needed. Policies like HB1574 appear to be well-meaning, but they do more harm than good in the long-run and create even more complex problems that will need to be solved later. Indiana should not adopt short-sighted policies that erode family engagement while forcing the state to be a permanent nanny for the children.
We know that inviting mental health services into schools will produce a list of children that supposedly need these services. If you go looking for problems, you will find them. Indiana policy has never been focused on going out and finding problems to solve, and it shouldn’t start now. Families in need of services already have access to those services. If lawmakers want to help families access care, they should make the cost of that care affordable for families and support policies that allow parents to be engaged in their child’s life, not suggest the state step in and play the role of the parents.
Ultimately, our children deserve to have access to education without the burden of being forced to address health problems in the school setting. We need to let kids be kids and stop forcing them to identify with every label adults try to place on them. School should be a place where children can dream of their future and hear that they can be anything they want to be – they don’t need to have their day interrupted to go sit in an office and talk about their problems. And if they do need that, they at least deserve to have their parent engaged and sitting next to them. Schools are for learning, not for receiving healthcare and HB1574 seeks to destroy the boundaries between the two.