District reports rise in Care Solace mental-health referrals; central school uses DIBELS/i-Ready diagnostics

East Bridgewater school administrators reported growing use of Care Solace, a third-party referral service that helps families connect to behavioral-health providers, and reviewed winter assessment data for early grades collected via DIBELS and i-Ready.

The district’s Care Solace dashboard showed 4,971 total communications from July 1 through Feb. 6, a significant increase over last year’s full-year total of 1,770 communications, according to the presentation. Staff said the service provides warm handoffs (where guidance or a counselor refers a family directly), family-initiated contacts (including anonymous searches), and provider contacts; the dashboard reports case types and aggregate demographic information but does not provide identifiable names for anonymized requests. The most common reasons families sought services were anxiety (55 percent), depression (41 percent), trauma (33 percent) and ADHD (23 percent). The district noted Care Solace is funded through a grant and the program’s dashboard allows staff to see times of day with high family demand and geographic distribution of providers.

Central School staff presented DIBELS (early literacy screeners) and i-Ready fall-to-winter comparisons for kindergarten through grade 2. Central staff said DIBELS helps identify pre-reading skill gaps — letter naming, sound identification and blends — and that the winter diagnostics show fewer students needing intensive intervention compared with fall screening. i-Ready results were reported relative to expected 50 percent growth by midyear; staff said many classrooms were meeting or exceeding expected midyear growth in the fall-to-winter window.

Administrators said the district can bring staff back for a deeper discussion and that guidance and counseling staff are using Care Solace to reduce counselors’ time spent finding providers and to connect families faster.