Building a Mental Health Resource Network in the Vinton-Shellsburg Community

By Katelynn Rients

NSLS Better Community: Better World Project | EXEC 302 Executive Leadership

How design thinking and community leadership created a centralized, family-friendly resource guide for Benton County families.

“Leadership is not always about having all the answers. Sometimes it is about knowing who to ask and helping others find the right support.”

What happens when a family needs help but does not know where to start?

That single question became the foundation for my NSLS Better Community: Better World Project in EXEC 302 Executive Leadership. As a future Early Childhood Special Education teacher, I know firsthand that children and families rarely experience needs in isolation. A child’s development often touches multiple interconnected systems — including school, mental health providers, healthcare, early childhood services, special education, and family support networks.

The project was completed during the Fall 2026 semester as part of EXEC 302 Executive Leadership and focused on the Vinton-Shellsburg community and surrounding Benton County area. I researched and communicated with local schools, healthcare providers, community organizations, and other service providers to verify resource information. The intended audience was families and educators who may need help identifying and connecting with appropriate support.

While researching my local area, I made an encouraging discovery: many high-quality resources already existed in the Vinton-Shellsburg community. The problem was not a lack of help — it was that the information was scattered across different organizations, making it overwhelming for a family experiencing a crisis or an educator looking for guidance to know where to begin.

My goal became simple: create one centralized, family-friendly resource guide that makes community support easier to find, understand, and access.

Finding the Problem: A Gap in Navigation

The primary hurdle facing families and educators in Benton County was not a lack of providers, but a navigation gap. Families should not have to search through multiple organizational websites just to figure out who to contact first. I wanted to create a tool that would provide a clear starting point and outline logical next steps.

This gap also directly impacts educators. Schools cannot single-handedly meet every mental health or family support need a child has. Teachers and administrators need a clear, reliable roadmap so they can quickly connect families with trusted community partners.

Applying the Design Thinking Process

To ensure the guide was practical, accessible, and user-friendly, I structured my project around the Design Thinking Process:

1. Empathize: Researched the real-world barriers families and educators face when seeking mental health and developmental support.
2. Define: Identified the core issue — not a shortage of services, but a complex navigation system.
3. Ideate: Explored structural layouts to categorize complex information into intuitive, bite-sized sections.
4. Prototype: Drafted the initial resource guide, organizing information by specific care needs.
5. Test: Evaluated the guide for readability, logical organization, phone/address accuracy, and overall ease of use.

During the prototyping and testing phases, I ensured the guide answered two essential questions for every user: Who can help? and What should I do next?

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The final guide organized community resources across key functional areas:

• Immediate Crisis & 24/7 Support: Direct connection to emergency services like the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, Your Life Iowa, and Mobile Crisis Outreach (319) 362-2174.
• School Supports: Direct contact information for counselors across Vinton-Shellsburg CSD buildings.
• Early Intervention & Special Education: Guidance for accessing services through Grant Wood AEA, and Iowa Early ACCESS.
• Family Assistance & Advocacy: Links to legal rights and parent training through the ASK Resource Center, HACAP Head Start, and Iowa DHHS — Benton County.

What Was Accomplished

While my initial goal was to identify and verify 10 local resources, the project expanded as I dove deeper into the community:

• 12 Verified Providers Across Care Categories: Successfully cataloged and verified 12 local organizations spanning school support, mental health, healthcare, early childhood, and family support.
• Two-Part Resource Tool: Created a 1-page Quick-Start Triage Guide for immediate crisis navigation and a 2-page Master Community Directory for comprehensive outreach.

Early Childhood Framework: Formatted early behavioral indicators (e.g., severe transition struggles, intense emotional bursts, social withdrawal) and paired them with interventions like social-emotional coaching, speech/OT/PT therapies, and long-term readiness outcomes

• Highlighted 100% Free Care Pathways: Explicitly demystified support costs by identifying three fully funded options — In-School Counseling, Grant Wood AEA Special Education Services (Ages 0–21), and Iowa Early ACCESS (Birth–3) — ensuring financial constraints do not prevent families from seeking help.
• District-Wide Application: Structured the guide so it can be shared across all four Vinton-Shellsburg Community School District buildings: Tilford Elementary, Shellsburg Elementary, Vinton-Shellsburg Middle School, and Vinton-Shellsburg High School.

Navigating Real-World Challenges

Working across organizational boundaries brought valuable real-world leadership lessons. Verifying details with healthcare agencies and community organizations meant coordinating with teams operating on their own busy schedules. Some responses took longer than expected, and I realized that some of my initial outreach requests were too broad.

Rather than seeing delays as setbacks, I used them as learning opportunities. I learned that community leadership requires proactive clarity, targeted communication, and building extra buffer time into project timelines.

Key Takeaways About Leadership

This experience transformed how I view leadership:

• Leadership is Relational: While organization, deadlines, and task completion are essential, community leadership is fundamentally built on relationships and trust.
• Resourcefulness over Omniscience: Leading does not mean knowing every answer — it means knowing who to ask and helping others navigate toward the right support.
• Advocacy Through Translation: True advocacy is taking complex, multi-layered institutional information and translating it into practical, user-friendly tools that empower others.

Looking Ahead

A community resource guide cannot simply be created and forgotten. Organizations update contact information, shift hours, and modify service offerings over time. To remain impactful, this guide will need periodic reviews and updates, with potential to grow into a broader digital platform in the future.

As I prepare for my career as an Early Childhood Special Education teacher, the core lesson from this project will remain at the heart of my work: schools cannot meet every developmental and mental health need alone. By building strong, active connections between schools, healthcare providers, community organizations, and families, we create a resilient support network where every child has the opportunity to thrive.