The Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) centers the needs of young people by bringing together organizations and agencies that support their well-being. It aims to further whole-student education across California, supporting counselors and schools in better attending to students' mental, emotional, and behavioral needs. CYBHI accomplishes this by incentivizing student counseling, establishing a system that ties counseling sessions of various types and lengths to reimbursements from unrestricted funds.
So far, CYBHI has awarded over $2 billion to 1600+ organizations across California. The funds reimbursed represent well over 2000 behavioral health services and supports provided to students statewide. These partnerships and the funding they secure are helping make prevention-oriented student care more accessible and coordinated among California schools and the organizations they work with.
The CYBHI counseling session reimbursement structure encourages direct student care to help ensure that every California student can show up to learn every day at their best. At the same time, it pushes counselors to accelerate student services to a rate they may not be accustomed to or prepared for. This creates a potential problem for schools who want to do right by their students but also struggle with counselor coverage.
The American School Counselor Association recommends a 250-to-1 student-to-counselor ratio. However, the national average student-to-counselor ratio was 372-to-1 in the 2024-2025 school year. With the average school counselor already overseeing nearly 50% more students than recommended, schools need more than financial incentives to offer more student counseling services. They need tools and resources that can make counselors’ jobs easier and more efficient while maintaining the quality of care students deserve.
Developed at the Stanford University d.school, Wayfinder is the complete PreK-12 platform for purpose-driven learning. By combining research-backed curriculum, MTSS-ready resources, and real-time insights, Wayfinder equips every learner with the skills to thrive in school and beyond. Wayfinder provides a vertically aligned curriculum and tiered intervention resources for educators and counselors to provide consistent, timely, and effective Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). Wayfinder’s four-step process makes MTSS delivery straightforward and easy to implement.
With thousands of PreK-12 lessons and activities for Tier 1 instruction and Tier 2 + 3 interventions, Wayfinder helps students build the foundational skills they need for success in academics and life.
Tier 1: Universal Supports
Years of experience show that you can’t intervention your way out of a Tier 1 problem. A strong foundation of universal supports is the first step to supporting every student. Wayfinder offers a variety of content + resources for Tier 1, including:
Tier 2: Small Group Intervention
Using Wayfinder’s counselor-facing tools, schools can identify small groups of students with shared needs, plan interventions, and find quality content to facilitate sessions. Our Tier 2 resources include:
Tier 3: One-on-One Intervention
Wayfinder offers counselor-specific content for intensive interventions, specifically designed for flexibility so that counselors and service providers can tailor it to their students’ individual needs:
Wayfinder’s Core Curriculum builds six future-ready skills: Self-Awareness, Adaptability, Empathy, Collaboration, Agency, and Purpose. These skills strengthen student engagement, achievement, and well-being. Wayfinder’s thematic Collections and 2000+ activities drive relevant, targeted learning experiences aligned to individual, school, and district goals. The Waypoints assessment suite provides actionable insights into student progress and automatically recommends activities to support each learner’s needs.
Counselors can use Wayfinder’s intervention planning tools and content to deliver research-backed tier 2 + 3 interventions from our extensive Activity Library and curated Collections of lessons and activities organized by topic. Together with Wayfinder, schools can establish continuous care across campus, streamline counselor workflows, and make time for more reimbursable student support sessions.
Popular Wayfinder content for counselors includes topics such as:
This content can also be used for alternatives to suspension, providing students with meaningful, restorative activities that address the root causes of behaviors like vaping, skipping class, or bullying. With resources on restorative practices, substance misuse, responsible decision-making, and custom Collections tailored to individual needs, Wayfinder gives you the tools to transform punitive measures into opportunities for growth and healthier habits.
Through CYBHI, qualified providers can submit reimbursements for behavioral health services provided in schools, securing funds that your school can then reinvest in additional efforts toward student well-being. View our free CYBHI resource to see how Wayfinder’s content and tools can enable counselors to deliver more quality student care and secure funds for your school—fill out this form to learn more.