County of Monterey shares Mental Health resources stemming from the events of the King City Shooting
MONTEREY COUNTY, Calif. (KION-TV)- A community is still in mourning after four people were killed in a King City mass shooting on March 3.
Now, the Monterey County Health Department and the King City Union School District are offering mental health resources for students and families in King City.
“We were reached out very early by administration and our school-based teams began coordinating right away with King city school administration to provide whatever needed support they were seeking for their students," Deputy Director of Behavioral Health of Monterey County Marni Sandoval said. "Additionally, we have our critical incident management team, and they have been available to support our first responders, and any of our institutes have been impacted by the event.”
Jennifer Taylor who is the superintendent for the King City Union School District tells us that it's important to go to an administrator, supervisor, or a trusted adult to let them know that they’re in need of support.
“We prepare by reaching out as soon as we know so that those resources can be on hand the minute school open," Taylor said. "The resources were ready to go so as soon as our students, our families arrived and we were ready to connect them with the agency or the person that could best meet their needs in the moment.”
For some, they may not have access to mental heath care but the schools and cities are finding ways to implement help for everyone.
“For several years now we’ve worked with agency such as Harmony at Home we brought them into our schools to provide services for our students," Taylor said. "I reached out several years ago to ask about bringing programs that they had in Salinas down to King City so we started a partnership with them along with the school psychologist counselors.”
Monterey County Behavioral Health says people in need of counseling services you can call 9-8-8.
The message that health care experts is sharing with KION is if you need help, you are not alone.
