FARMINGTON—The Davis School District Student & Family Resources Department offers several programs to help connect students and families with the resources they need. They have four full-time Integrated Educational Therapists (IET) that rove throughout the district working with all the schools to provide services that meet the needs of students without benefits. Through a partnership with the military, they now provide Military Educational Therapists (MET).

“In the spring the military came with a pot of money to have a program,” said Casey Layton, District Director of Responsive Services, Crisis Response Team Secondary Case Management. “It’s for military families whether they have a military background or are serving.”

It’s not just the Purple Star schools, he said. “There are two military family advocates that will be roving through the district to all branches of the military, not just the Air Force. They’ll also work with special education students and those with a 504 or IEP.”

The advocates will provide brief therapy stabilization and group therapy for students who have experienced constant moving and are always new to the area, said Layton. “We’ve got a lot of agencies to help with this. We meet as an organization with school principals, school counselors and counselors from the base to identify the biggest need and how to serve them (students). We might decide the Military Family Life Counselor (MFLC) would be best to meet with and we’ll work with the military liaison to do what’s best for kids.”

The department also works with nonmilitary students and families. “We’ve added family service workers to connect families to resources at the elementary level,” Layton said. “We have provided advocates and personnel staff at the Teen Centers. I’m really excited about what they have to offer. It’s Maslow’s Law, where do you go for clean clothes and a meal?”

IETs make eight to 10 visits and one to two stabilization visits, he said. “We facilitate those and manage their caseload.”

There’s a lot of responsive services out in the community and in the school setting, said Layton. “It’s exciting. The superintendent and school board find funding for these programs. We’ve been working for the last five years to get going in this area. We’ve always wanted to but didn’t have the means. We’re helping a lot of kids.”

To find out what programs the district offers visit their webpage under Student & Family Resources. To start any kind of referral parents should talk to an administrator or the school counselor who can get them connected to resources. λ