The group’s main focus last year was the first ever Students Who Act Generously, Grow and Earn Respect, or S.W.A.G.G.E.R., Awards, an honor bestowed on local youth who improved their lives or the lives of others.
“I’ve been on the commission for two years and that was by far the most successful thing we’ve done,” commission member Matt Hanauer said.
Though they are excited to repeat the awards program next winter, for now the commission is looking toward Mental Health Month in May.
“We wanted to focus 2016 on something in our city that mattered related to kids,” Commission Vice President YeVonne Jones said. “We listened to all the people last year, and over and over they were saying mental health was the huge problem.”
Representatives from the city’s housing department had spoken to the group and mentioned mental health in children being a major problem with the families they work with.
School corporation employees, IU Health workers and the mayor had done the same, she said.
“So we know that mental health is a number one area where gaps are in our community,” Jones said.
The commission said they want to raise community consciousness with the 2016 Advertising and PR Campaign for Mental Health Awareness.
They debated the benefits of starting with a campaign focused on available resources or focusing on mental health in low-income families. The commission also went back and forth on if awareness should be centered on anxiety in a specific age range or on how to treat the anxiety itself, or target the root causes.
“People see kids as carefree,” Donna Bernens-Kinkead, a committee member and fifth grade teacher said. “But anxiety manifests itself in children in so many different ways and at such a young age.”
The committee did not decide Tuesday which aspect of mental health they would like to concentrate on, but members said they look forward to seeking community feedback and working with various partners.
One of those partners may come in the form of a new Bloomington group called Building a Thriving Compassionate Community.
Allison Zimpfer-Hoerr, a member of BTCC, was at Tuesday’s commission meeting to share about her group’s mission. The BTTC is a network of local individuals and organizations devoted to creating a safer community by building “knowledge, skills and resources needed to prevent and intervene in the processes that create trauma,” according to the group’s Facebook page.
“What we’re looking at are the conditions that young kids need to thrive and all of the things that get in the way of that,” Zimpfer-Hoerr said.
She noted many of these circumstances, like affordable childcare and housing, are not under parents’ control.
“Then we need to look at what we, as a community, have a responsibility to do,” Zimpfer-Hoeer said.
