There’s increasing concern among school administrators across Iowa about students with mental health issues, and whether the state will be able to provide them with the assistance they need.

State Sen. Amy Sinclair says mental health care reform will be one of the important matters taken up during the spring session of the Iowa Senate; she tells KNIA/KRLS News administrators consistently tell her of the need to provide these at-risk students with the care they need.

“When we speak with school administrators, their first item of concern…take out funding, take out testing, take out all of that, their first item of concern is meeting the mental health needs of their students,” Sen. Sinclair says. “We’ve changed as a society from where we were twenty, thirty, fifty years ago, however far back you want to look at it.

“There are more and more extreme mental health needs that are facing younger and younger students, and we need to make sure we’re staying on top of that and addressing the needs of the students.”

Sen. Sinclair says child mental health care is the next logical step to follow the reforms put in place last year for the state’s overall mental health system.