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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Imagine instead if 1/3 of that $2B was put into schools for specifically mental health services.
It would mean a qualified school councilor for almost every school, with a specialist team for a region. Fixing problems at source or at least making a meaningful go at fixing the problems.
$2B over 5 years, with 1/3 going to schools?
So $666M split among 374 high schools (let's assume only high schools as there are almost 2,000 primary schools). Let's add the composites as well, as I believe these generally include at least some of the high school years. 193 of those brings us to 567 schools.
That's about $1.2M per school. Or about $235k per year. I'd guess that since senior counsellors earn about $100k, this should be plenty to cover one qualified school counsellor per school including both salary and extra admin costs, with extra left over so large schools could have multiple.
I think the next problem to solve is finding another 600 counsellors, but I think you may be right that this would be an effective prevention step. It's enough money that you could bump pay by $30k as incentive and still be well within budget.
I love it when the numbers get run
Prevention is my goal.
But the 600 extra counselors is a major issue. But I would also establish a specialist team of 6-8 to take on difficult cases per region.
This approach; would pay dividends for generations.
The next challenge is how to keep accountability in politics while also incentivising polititions to think beyond the next election cycle...
Lets focus on the possible before tackling the impossible.