Following a recommendation from Wilton Public Schools, the Board of Selectmen unanimously approved $12,500 to try out a virtual therapy resource for mental health services for children in grades kindergarten through eight.

Money from the town’s Opioid Fund will be put toward a one-year trial with Cartwheel Care, Inc., which describes itself as a school-community partner that augments direct connections with virtual mental health service providers for kids.

Stephanie Rowe, director of Wilton’s Social Services Department, said that while virtual therapy and guidance are not the preferred option versus in-person interventions, given the needs in town, she sees this as a valuable resource.

“Cartwheel is a program that will provide a service gap that Wilton Social Service and the schools have,” she said.

“We’ve all had small children and have needed to get some type of mental health service,” she said, with elementary age children demonstrating threats to themselves, threats to others, and suicidal ideation in some recent cases.

Wilton Deputy Police Chief Robert Cipolla said about half of the mental health service calls his department receives involve people under the age of 19.

“It’s far and few between,” she said of therapy services aimed at this age group, “and when it is available, it’s a lot of money.”

“The plan is to have … one year of Cartwheel at $12,500 using the Opioid Fund to test it out,” Rowe said. “They can service up to 25 children and they can start during the summer, which is another service gap that the school systems can’t help with, during the summer.”

The Opioid Fund is money first allotted to state municipalities in 2023 through nationwide legal settlements with opioid manufacturers, shippers and retailers.

Wilton CFO Dawn Norton told the BOS there is currently $161,275 in the fund, with around $200,000 more expected to come over the next 12 or so years.

Asked about whether this was an appropriate use of that fund, Deputy Police Chief Robert Cipolla said he believed it was.

“I think it’s important when we look at this fund that we focus on the buckets of prevention, treatment and recovery,” he said, with early therapeutic intervention an opportunity to instill healthier coping mechanisms in children at risk.

“It’s an investment in youth prevention [and] it’s going to be geared toward some of those higher risk situations that the school identifies,” he said.

Cipolla said about half of the mental health service calls his department receives involve people under the age of 19.

While there are some programs that cater to older kids, including Kids in Crisis and Positive Directions, both of which the town has partnered with in the past, there are no options for younger children.

“The resounding thing we continue to hear is that access to service for these younger kids is an issue,” Cipolla said.

Rowe said Cartwheel can also help households that are not insured get connected.

“Then the school can let us know and we can reach out and help them,” she said, once Cartwheel can identify needs within each respective household.

Selectman Ross Tartell spoke in favor of the initiative.

“There’s an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and so what you’re doing with a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 7-year-old, is preventative,” he said.

“You can put them back, hopefully, on the right track, because once they start on opioid use or some sort of addictive behavior, it’s really hard to pull them back,” he said, citing teens he has known who have overdosed and died.

Selectman Bas Nabulsi raised a question of how the service might be quantifiable, as he pointed out Cartwheel’s literature claimed.

“What I was trying to understand from the [organization] is how we would be able to monitor the effectiveness of the services,” he said.

“I guess I’m mystified, honestly, how a service like this could provide any information about a clinical outcome and how do you measure a clinical outcome?” he said.

First Selectman Toni Boucher said the progress would, in essence, be anecdotal, starting with the school district.

“The schools are, first of all, recommending this,” she said. “They, in turn, have seen behavior that needs assistance, so they, in turn, would find out if that behavior has improved.”

Rowe said her department has received several requests for mental health services in the past few months.

“The schools have received more than us because they’re in it, but we have received [requests for children] as low as four years old to get mental health services,” she said.