NSG 4150 Week 4 Discussion

Paper Instructions

To be an advocate for Policy development at the Federal level, you must be actively engaged with legislative efforts. To do so, you will need to be aware of who your legislators are.

To determine who your legislators are, visit Plural’s Find Your Local Legislator webpageLinks to an external site.. (This site will list both your State and Federal officials.)

In your discussion post, address the following

  • In which state do you live?
  • Who are your state legislators? Include both your state senator and your state representative.
  • Who are your federal legislators? Include both your U.S. senator and U.S. representative. (You could have more than one for each.)
  • Then, visit Congress.govLinks to an external site. and choose one piece of pending federal legislation about which you feel passionate.
  • What is the name of the pending legislation? Include both number and title.
  • Where is it in the policy development process – is it heading to the House or heading to the Senate?
  • Why are you passionate about this particular piece of pending legislation?
  • Depending on whether it’s approaching the House or the Senate, which of your federal legislators would you contact if you wanted to advocate for this bill to become a law?

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I currently live in California. The state legislators are Jim Patterson (R) from District 8, who represents the lower chamber, and Marie Alvarado-Gil (D) from District 4, who represents the upper chamber. The Federal legislators are Senator Alex Padilla (D) from the California District, Senator Laphonza R. Butler (D) from the California district, and Tom McClintock (R) from District CA-5 representing in the House of Representatives.

H.R.3055, Improving Mental Health in Schools Act, is a pending Federal bill. The bill includes certain mental health professionals as specialized instructional support personnel for elementary and secondary education. The bill revises the description of specialized instructional support personnel in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

It includes qualified mental health professionals providing mental health services for students. These professionals include marriage and family therapists, licensed clinical social workers, and clinical psychologists. Rep. Harder, Josh [D-CA-9] introduced the bill in the House on 05/02/2023 and referred it to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The legislation is of interest since mental health is a growing issue among children and adolescents who are increasingly being diagnosed with mental health conditions. It is vital to provide mental health services in elementary and secondary schools to curb the mental health menace among students (Kemal et al., 2023).

Including mental health professionals in schools can improve access to mental health services and counseling in schools and lower the incidence of mental health disorders and suicide among school-going children and adolescents (Schweitzer et al., 2023). Since the Bill is in the House of Representatives, I would contact and approach Rep. Tom McClintock to support the enactment of the bill, which will improve mental health among students

References

  • Kemal, S., Nwabuo, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2023). Mental Health and Violence in Children and Adolescents. Pediatric clinics of North America, 70(6), 1201–1215. https //doi.org/10.1016/j.pcl.2023.06.011
  • Schweitzer, J., Bird, A., Bowers, H., Carr-Lee, N., Gibney, J., Schellinger, K., Holt, J. R., Adams, D. P., Hensler, D. J., & Hollenbach, K. (2023). Developing an innovative pediatric integrated mental health care program Interdisciplinary team successes and challenges. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14. https //doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1252037

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We’ll write a 100% plagiarism-free paper in under 1 hour