With students returning to school amid a pandemic, mental health is something that is seeing a lot of focus from the Chinook School Division as they work to return a sense of normalcy to kids' lives.

As Bob Vavra, Superintendent of Learning, presented the school district's learning plan to assembled school board members last week, he devoted some time to talk about Mental Health First Aid, and how that program would fit into the schools during the school year.

"There has been an impact, and that's why we're putting in mental health and well-being supports to kind of help kids through that part of the pandemic."

As Vavra explained, they knew that a provincial focus on mental health was likely going to be on the books for the school year, and that's why he said they chose to get out on top of it early, beginning before the school year even began.

"Because we knew reconnecting and re-engaging was going to be so important and we thought we had to do things even before the year started. So that's why we brought in Anxiety Experts, trauma experts and that's why we did some of the things where we connected them to supports last year to help prepare for this year."

A new component to that plan is the development of Mental Health First Aid trained individuals in each building. Thanks to some funding by the government, the relatively new initiative would see one person from each building trained to provide some basic emergency mental health support such as intervention and also connect with 13 councillors and other mental health agencies that can provide more in-depth support.

The concept of Mental Health First Aid was first developed in Australia in 2001 and has since spread to 23 other countries. It was brought to Canada in 2006 by the Alberta Mental Health Board and has trained over 500,000 individuals since arriving.

The intention within the Chinook School Division is to begin training those individuals at the end of September, with a planned November completion.

For more on Mental Health First Aid Canada, visit the Mental Health Commission of Canada here.