Jefferson County Schools’ Mental Health Provider Advertising “Affirming Therapy For All LGBTQ+ Clients”

LGBTQ, an Acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning

Image Credit: Allied Behavior Health Solutions / Facebook

By David Seal [Special to The Tennessee Conservative] –

A local grassroots organization was surprised to learn that Jefferson County, Tennessee Schools made a contract with a Nashville-based mental health provider to place at least ten clinical practitioners in Jefferson County Schools, serving kindergarten to 12^th grade.

Jefferson County Director of Schools signed a $100,000.00 agreement with Allied Behavioral Health Solutions (Allied) on September 22, 2022, to continue a variety of student mental and behavioral health services that started in 2019. A copy of the contract can be viewed at the link provided HERE.

The Allied services are being paid for, in part, by a grant from the Tennessee Department of Education called the Resilient School Communities Grant, providing a wide variety of mental health services to students.

“We were just reviewing grant applications, school system emails, and objectionable student survey questions that were obtained by records requests and noticed a reference on the signature line of Allied emails, ‘why pronouns matter’. When the pronoun reference raised red flags, our team reviewed the Allied Behavioral Health Solutions website and found, among other services, ‘Affirming Therapy for All LGBTQ+ Clients’ advertised on their home page, ‘Exploration of gender and sexual identity’ listed under the heading ‘Child and Adolescent Counseling’ – Empowered Jefferson

Screenshots of the Allied website are linked here.

(Allied Behavioral Health Solutions Home Page January 4, 2023)

(Allied Behavioral Health Child and Adolescent Counseling Page January 4, 2023)

Emails between Allied and JCS indicate that 11,885 hours of student counseling services had been delivered to students from 2019, when the mental health provider started services in Jefferson County K-12 schools, to September 2022. Allied contractually requires JCS to provide rent free “dedicated space” to “provide a contained private area for provision of clinical services”. It is unclear if parents and school staff are present when counseling services are provided to students.

To see the Allied service report released by JCS in a records request, a link is provided HERE. 

Mental health referrals increased dramatically in Jefferson County Schools in 2022.

Allied Behavioral Health Solutions invited Jefferson County School counseling staff to a “free” seminar that included a session on “Building an Affirming Practice for LGBTQ+ Clients”. The training was held on August 12, 2022. Carrie Trent, Supervisor of Student Support and Whole Child Services, indicated that records were not kept on the number of school counselors that participated in the training. To see the LGBTQ+ training session invitation, visit the link provided HERE.

*Note: This article first appeared in The Jefferson County Post. Submitted for publication on The Tennessee Conservative by the author.

Author’s note and update: after this story ran in the Jefferson County Post on January 25, 2023, citizens addressed their concerns about Allied Behavioral Health Solutions gender affirming ideology at the February 2, 2023 Jefferson County School Board Work Session. Since that date, Allied has deleted references to LGBTQ+ from its website and social media page, but not before a plethora of images were captured, including the two shown in the article image. Empowered Jefferson strongly urges parents to research third party providers their school system may use for “mental health” services. 

About the Author: David Seal is a retired Jefferson County educator, recognized artist, local businessman,
917 Society Volunteer, and current Chairman of the Jefferson County Republican Party. He has also served Jefferson County as a County Commissioner and is a lobbyist for the people on issues such as eminent domain, property rights, education, and broadband accessibility on the state level.