Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 2/13/2023
SPRINGFIELD — The U.S. Department of Education has awarded a $3.29 million Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Grant to the chair of the Department of Counseling at Springfield College.
Professor Allison Cumming-McCann has been with Springfield College for 22 years, running the school counseling program for the last 15 years, becoming department chair some nine years ago.
The program trains graduate level counselors in school counseling as well as school adjustment counseling.
She said, “My mission in running the graduate school counseling program was to train counselors to work with my kids ... to be somebody I would feel comfortable with working with my kids.”
Education and counseling are somewhat of a family dedication for Cumming-McCann; her husband is an educator and school principal in Springfield and the couple’s children are products of the school system who have returned to the community.
She said, “Springfield College trains somebody to be a holistic counselor in a school, they’re really well versed in clinical skills, but they also get how schools work. Our program has been focused on [urban education] in the sense that we really do look at some of the challenges of working in city schools.”
Cumming-McCann said there was a noticeable increase in the need for mental health services beginning about five years ago, stressors and strain not only impacting students but also educators and staff.
The coronavirus pandemic, she said, only exasperated the need, elevating the necessity for more school-based counselors, explaining, “We have seen high turnover for school counselors and probably for the first time in my twenty years in the field, there are more jobs than there are graduates.”
The departures and unfilled positions, Cumming-McCann said, are not unique to Springfield or city schools in general. Counselors and educators are leaving for the same reasons the field overall is seeing a drop.
In past years, it was common for counselors to work regularly with five percent of the students.
Cumming–McCann said, “Now it is more like 40 percent and there’s still so many kids that are flying below the radar...they need help, and we miss them.”
Cumming-McCann, who authored the grant application, explained the goal of the grant is twofold, saying, “I want to train and better train more counselors who look like the kids in the school, we definitely have a focus on getting more Latinx, more Spanish speaking counselors...they are a necessity to work with families in our community.”
“Part of this grant,” she added, “is really about implementing and training for my counselors to do comprehensive school counseling, which means in some way having contact with every student on your caseload.”
One of the tools the grant will help fund is directed at getting more counselors into the schools faster, achieved by a post master’s certificate program aimed towards those professionals currently involved in social work or mental health counseling.
Candidates looking for a change can roll into the program and potentially be licensed within a year as a school counselor, remaining in human services but with a difference they may be seeking.
Working in a school is a little different than working for the state’s Department of Children and Families, according to Cumming-McCann.
“In the school you get to see the kids having good days and bad days and those good days are what make the bad days manageable ... if you’re only working with kids in crisis, it can be exhausting,” she said.
Also, in the mix, a high-school pipeline where the program reaches out to juniors and seniors with interest in the field, even nurturing them through their undergraduate years, directed them toward the program.
While most program candidates tend to come from or are headed toward the health or human services field, Cumming-McCann said there are participants in the 60-credit graduate program who have gravitated from other areas of the workforce. “I have business majors who are some of my top counselors ... they have an epiphany after a year of working and they realize, ‘This isn’t what I want to do.’”
The government funding opens doors for the enhancement of existing partnerships with educators; increasing the number of innovative training opportunities as well as adding tuition assistance, stipends for fieldwork and funding for mentors within the Springfield and Holyoke schools.
While the program already enjoys a longstanding partnership with the schools in Springfield and Holyoke, Cumming-McCann said there is something more that she would like to see, “My goal [for the program] is to get more people who did grow up in Springfield or Holyoke or similar communities.”
The grant funding, she said, adds another layer of optimism to the program.
“Hopefully, we’re enriching the core, the folks that are already there doing the work so that they’re feeling revitalized and excited about the work that they do and staying timely,” she said.