California invests $2.2M to support the mental health of kids coping with last year’s firestorms

A program supporting the mental health of young survivors of last year’s firestorms will receive $2.2 million in funding from philanthropic donors, according to Governor Gavin Newsom.

The funds will come from LA Rises, a public-private partnership mostly supported by philanthropic donors as well as state grants. The money will go to UCLA Health's Sound Body Sound Mind program.

They’ll provide an app for students and families with guided training on mental health topics. The funding will also go towards workshops and curriculum for staff at 33 schools in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades focused on resiliency.

Matt Flesock, executive director of UCLA Health's Sound Body Sound Mind program told LAist the work will support the mental health of students who were hit by the back-to-back traumas of the COVID-19 pandemic and last year’s historic firestorms.

“Their entire formative years in school have experienced really, really tremendous disruption. And that’s what made this so pressing and so important,” Flesock said.

What does a resiliency curriculum look like? 

Dr. Catherine Mogil, associate professor of psychology at UCLA, said the curriculum that schools will go out to the dozens of fire-affected schools is called FOCUS: Families Overcoming Under Stress. The trauma-informed, reliance-focused curriculum has been used at hospitals with kids with medical traumas and has been specially tailored for fire-related stress.

The curriculum will include teaching kids the concept of a ‘feeling thermometer’ that can help them identify and regulate emotions when they are more manageable rather than in the red zone.

"Kids who have a wider emotional vocabulary can talk to adults about how they’re feeling and how they might want to manage uncomfortable feelings or manage stress,” Mogil said

Coping skills taught might include breathing exercises, knowing when to reach out to a friend, or having an internal mantra.

Mogil said the program will also include workshops for teachers and parents on opening up difficult conversations with kids: How do you answer the difficult questions when you may not know the answers? How do you re-instill safety when you yourself may feel unsafe?

The state estimates some 30,000 students will benefit from the program over the next two school years.