Bay City's Washington Elementary is one of the first schools in the state to launch an in-house health center to address medical and behavioral issues for its large population of at-risk students.
Earlier this year, the public school, in partnership with the Bay County Department of Health and Human Services, Bay County Public Health Department, Bay-Arenac Behavioral Health and Probate Judge John C. Keuvelaar, secured a $300,000 grant to create the Washington Elementary School Family Health Initiative.
The idea is to remove barriers from a child's life to ensure they receive the appropriate therapeutic intervention for their behavior and, as a result, show up to school and be successful.
"I have seen too much correlation between juvenile crimes and abuse and neglect cases where the children have suffered from a lack of classroom attendance," Keuvelaar said. "Many times, these children are suffering from a lack of therapeutic intervention for their behaviors that if treated sooner would have avoided court intervention."
[For more of this story, written by Andrew Dodson, go to http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-...tary_school_fam.html]
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