Staff, students and parents alike will be able to provide input within the Upper Grand District School Board on a survey released Monday. The Wellbeing Health and Youth Survey aims to address mental health, bullying and several other topics within schools.

The range of topics the survey covers has been added to since last year, says Lyndsey Dossett, health promotion specialist at WDG Public Health.

“We’ve recently added two new sections based on emerging topic areas that have emerged in the news that we know are impacting the health of children and youth. So that is social media and video games," Dosset said.

The hand-in-hand aspect between the board and public health is crucial, Dossett added.

“Not every region has this partnership set up between the school board and the public health unit to be able to track the health and wellbeing of children and youth in our area over time. So, that’s the biggest thing is we have this information to take a look at this stuff," she said.

Meanwhile Blayne Primeau, manager of research, evidence, and innovation at UGDSB, added these numbers give a better picture than regular board assessments.

“It's super important to school boards to collect information on of course like assessments and EQAO and report card marks. That’s all really important but this gives us another perspective and another viewpoint on how our students are feeling about being in our schools,” Primeau explained.

Primeau says the parent/guardian responses are incredibly valuable.

“When it comes to the school climate surveys, I think we’re legislated to get it from all our stakeholders, so from our parents, our staff and our students. It goes well beyond just being legislated," Primeau said.

"It is super important to not only get student perspective which is the most important, but also the parents and caregivers’ perspective,” he added.

Primeau added that these numbers help UGDSB make decisions on how to move forward within the board.

“So we use it along with our achievement data, our attendance data. All that other information we have at a system level, to assess and evaluate where we are at a system and school level- look at that data critically to see ‘where do we need to go next?’” he pointed out

Dossett stated there are multiple ways public health can use the data to prevent issues within the community.

“We’re really trying to catch this stuff as early possible if there are any issues or challenges happening, and try to target that through different community interventions, school interventions and such,” Dossett ventured.

Dossett says public health will prepare easy to "digest" graphics and tables once data is collected.

The survey will run until Nov. 24.

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