The vocational aspirations of teenagers are frequently fickle, if not downright volatile. Without thoughtful, continual, knowledgeable guidance, high schoolers looking to set their career and post-graduate compass are apt to find themselves frustrated, rudderless, and settling for low-hanging fruit more readily available to them.
During the 2024-2025 school year,
Talbert House launched the INsight School to Work program at three area high schools to introduce interested students to a variety of mental health careers via both college prep and vocational training tracks. The program is funded by a $1.1 million grant provided by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Services and Hamilton County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board.
According to a
2022 report from the American Public Health Association, more than 132 million Americans are directly impacted by a lack of access to mental health treatment because of a lack of available providers and support staff. The report estimated a shortage of more than 6,600 mental health practitioners, underscoring the need for an influx of qualified workers in the field.
Heather Low, the INsight School to Work program’s associate director, formerly managed Talbert House’s school-based services before departing the organization in 2021. She rejoined to help launch the program. Given the substantial number of unfilled positions in the mental health field, she said it was important to expose high school students to the opportunity.
“In having conversations with students, they initially thought therapist and psychiatrist were the only positions available in the field,” she said. “It’s exciting to introduce them to a career path in a high demand field.”
Winton Woods, Deer Park, and Reading high schools served as partners in INsight’s inaugural school team. To help recruit interested students, schools gave in-class presentations introducing the program or enlisted guidance counselors familiar with students’ academic profiles to recommend candidates. The initial year’s program included sophomores, juniors and seniors, but the program will scale back to juniors and seniors due to the frequent schedule conflicts many 10
th-graders encountered. Low said spring semester “lunch and learns” would be open to sophomores to familiarize them with INsight offerings.
The INsight curriculum provided much more than standard classroom lectures. Low said therapists, counselors, nurses, social workers, and others in mental health services have made in-person and virtual presentations that illuminate students on what their working lives entail.
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INsight presentation at the Deer Park high school board meeting in September, 2024.Each school’s program began the year with approximately 30 students. Attrition reduced enrollment slightly, but student feedback has been consistently positive.
“Students have appreciated gaining knowledge and experience that provides holistically developmental opportunities that also helps future professional development,” she said. “Learning about opportunities and being able to help students adjust planning to adjust their future career planning has been productive and rewarding.”
Low noted that school navigators have effectively used gamification to stoke students’ interest, particularly the use of “escape room” games that require students to pool their knowledge and collaboratively solve problems to win games and grow knowledge in a fun atmosphere.
To accommodate graduates who have completed the program, Talbert House Director Nichol Boberg has worked with agencies to create positions for graduates that have achieved qualified behavioral health specialist (QBHS) certification. Best Point Education and Behavioral Health, a Madisonville nonprofit that provides behavioral health services, has discussed creating summer positions to help INsight students gain real-life experience in the field.
For students looking to further their education at two- or four-year colleges and universities, the program helps students better prepare for post-secondary programs in psychology, social work, public health, and other fields that serve those with mental health challenges.
Low is interested in enlisting mentors from a variety of mental health professionals with diverse experience. She noted that many students are interested in nursing careers (a prudent choice given the abundance of senior citizen Baby Boomers), so INsight staged a panel discussion with nurses from various medical specialties to answer questions and discuss their work’s rewards and challenges. She noted that a presentation from a forensic nurse – a growing health care niche that fulfills a unique role as medical care provider, advocate, and emotional support system for those impacted by violent crime or traumatic events – was particularly well received by students.
“We’ve been able to expose our students to a broad cross-section of expertise,” Low said. “And we’d be interested in having more mental health professionals who work in criminal justice, social-work case managers, and medical researchers are other disciplines about which I think our students would benefit from learning more.”
Stephanie Strange, who supervises the INsight program at Winton Woods, joined the organization last fall and has been a social worker for more than 10 years, primarily as a therapist and case management. This is her first school-based assignment.
She said that students often gravitated toward nursing as an educational track, with occupational therapy, and case management providing other common career pursuits. Sophomores’ instruction introduced potential careers in social work, family counseling, psychology, and child development, among others.
Juniors and seniors had the opportunity to gain certification in teen mental health first aid, which teaches students how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental health and substance use following guidelines established by the
National Council for Mental Wellbeing. Seniors had opportunities for informational interviews with professionals and were encouraged to develop their own questions to find out about providers’ experience and assessment of their fields.
“As we work on refining the program in its second year, we’ll strive to create more job-shadowing opportunities, because hands-on learning is so important,” Strange said. “Cincinnati Children’s occupational therapy department provided a great shadowing experience, and TriHealth enabled students to gain exposure to a variety of behavioral health fields. We hope to build on those kinds of experiences going forward.”
Strange noted that INsight provided scholarship opportunities for postsecondary education, as well as financial incentives furnished through the grant to enter the behavioral health workforce immediately after high school. She also intends to network more assertively to seek more mentors who can help students navigate post-high school paths. She noted that seniors exiting the program all planned to attend college, but that some juniors said they might prefer to become certified, such as becoming a certified community health worker, and enter the field after graduation.
Strange also hopes to expand INsight’s repertoire to include exposure to more specialized behavioral health careers, such as child life specialist, behavioral analyst, or recreational therapist.
Currently, the grant is only applicable to Hamilton County, but Low said Brown County officials were interested in introducing the program in that county. If INsight’s program funding increases, there’s interest in moving the program into the region’s vocational and technical education programs.
The current grant expires on June 30, and Low is pursuing various avenues to ensure the program’s continuation. If the grant isn’t renewed, Talbert House will seek support from community partners.
Support for the A Force for Good series is provided in part by Leadership Council for Nonprofits, with a mission to maximize the impact of nonprofit organizations, develop their leaders and strengthen the regional nonprofit community.