[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - Hi everyone, Steve Adubato.

We kick off the program with an important conversation with Diane Travers, who's the Senior Director of Programs at an organization called Family Connections.

We'll put up the website there and also NJ4S-Essex Hub Director.

Diane, good to see you.

- Good morning, Steve.

Thank you for having me on the show.

- You got it.

You'll see this at night, but we're taping in the morning.

Diane, you got a lot going on with the titles here.

First, website's up for Family Connections.

What's that?

- Well, Family Connections is the managing organization for NJ4S-Essex, and Family Connections is a leading nonprofit here in northern New Jersey.

We've been around, we're about to celebrate our 145th anniversary, so that's exciting.

And we've got a variety of programs, over 35 programs that combat trauma, mental illness, substance use, child abuse, and domestic violence, just to name a few.

- What is NJ4S?

That's a separate website, right, Diane?

- Yes, we are connected through the Family Connections website as well as we have our own.

And NJ4S-Essex is one of the newer programs here at Family Connections, but it's part of a statewide initiative.

So, what NJ4S stands for is New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services.

- NJ4S.

- You got it.

- Four S's, go ahead.

- Four S. The Department of Children and Families really had been working on this concept with the legislators in New Jersey, really is an effort to expand student support services throughout the state of New Jersey.

So, there are 15 hubs across the state.

We are the Essex County hub, and we serve all of the schools in Essex County as well as 130 of the schools are eligible for our more intensive services.

- So Diane, we were introduced to you through our friends and colleagues at the New Jersey Healthcare, the Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey, lemme clarify that.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

And one of their big pushes is, and one of their big priorities is around youth mental health issues.

Describe the youth mental health crisis in Essex County, which is representative of the crisis across the state and the nation.

- Yeah, so, I think what's important to highlight is back in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control did conduct a study of students across America, which is very representative of what we're seeing here in Essex County and statewide.

42% of the youth surveyed reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless.

29% of those students reported feeling like they had poor mental health.

And 22% admitted that they had thought about attempting suicide.

So, we're seeing this same crisis play out in our schools here in Essex County with a few variables.

We've got a lot of high needs students, over 100,000 students have identified as being high needs in our county.

Those students are dealing with a significant amount of trauma.

They're dealing with racial trauma in the communities, violence, crises within their families.

So, we've got this added layer as well here that really, really creates, again, as you said, you know, quite urgency for services to support the youth.

- Diane, let's be more specific.

What do many of these young people need?

What do they need?

- I think what a lot of young people need is they need somebody that can mentor them, that cares about them, that can be a support to them.

More specifically, they need individuals who are trained in the areas of difficulty that they're experiencing.

So, our clinicians have been trained in cognitive behavioral interventions for trauma in schools with training on racial trauma to really support our students who are experiencing trauma, as well as grief, anxiety, other mental health challenges like depression, suicide prevention, violence prevention, and bullying prevention.

- But does that not also include mental health issues, issues of isolation, issues of anxiety, fear, depression, et cetera, tied to the increase in antisemitism, the increase in Islamophobia, it's always been there, but given the events in Gaza, it's worse.

Talk about that.

- We are hearing from our schools that the incidents have increased and we have gotten referrals specifically for students who are unfortunately parroting some of that hate in their rhetoric.

I think that there are so many challenges today in terms of the world feeling to be a very uncertain place for many of our youth.

We've got the wars, we've got the political climate, and we have a lot of racial trauma right here in Essex County.

Tell folks if it's a parent, if it's a younger person they're watching, how do they access the support services?

- It's a great question.

So, one of the things that we've done is really tried to increase the awareness around parents.

So, if you go to our website, we've got a specific page for parents, for students, we've got a spot that parents can click on and get a template for a letter that they can give to their principals to say, "Where is NJ4S in my son or daughter's school?"

We've got access for students where we've been really promoting our social media, Instagram posts, getting youth to sign up through QR codes so they can receive important information.

As well as we're rolling out a really important text messaging system where parents will be able to sign up to get updates from NJ4S-Essex, but also to receive kind of resiliency messages each week on how to support their youth, challenges they may be experiencing within their families.

How to connect, how to connect to their teenagers.

- Diane Travers is Senior Director of Programs at Family Connections, also tied to the state program called NJ4S in the Essex County area.

But it doesn't matter where you are watching, 21 counties in the state.

Access the website that we've had up of NJ4S.

Find out more, find out how you can get help for those closest to you, particularly younger people struggling with severe mental health challenges.

Intercede, get engaged, find out what the services are.

Diane, thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it.

- Thank you, Steve.

- Stay with us, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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