Subject: National Center for School Mental Health newsletter - September 2018
NCSMH newsletter 
September 2018
Our National Center for School Mental Health team wishes students, families, and school teams a wonderful start to the 2018-2019 school year! This edition of our newsletter highlights resources and research to support a positive start to the school year, in addition to a featured section on work across the nation to promote school safety via comprehensive school mental health systems.
NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS
Mark Your Calendars for the 2018 Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health!
The 2018 Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health will be held October 11-13, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Red Rock Casino, Resort, and Spa. The theme of the conference is School Mental Health - A Sure Bet for Student Success! 

Please visit our website for more details http://bit.ly/csmh2018
Free Professional Development Opportunity for School-Based Mental/Behavioral Health Providers
The University of Washington's School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center is excited to offer school-based mental and behavioral health providers the opportunity to participate in a professional development project – BOLT (Brief Online Training for Measurement-Based Care) – this fall. BOLT is open to any mental/behavioral health provider who routinely delivers individual-level psychotherapy interventions and spends ≥50% of their time providing services in schools. Providers will complete online surveys and be randomly assigned to participate in either the "BOLT" (training and post-training consultation package with ongoing assessments) or "no-BOLT" (ongoing assessments only) conditions. Time commitments and incentives (between $300-$500 and a certificate to document continuing education credits) vary depending on condition.

If you are interested in participating in the BOLT project, please see the attached flyer, visit https://education.uw.edu/smart/bolt, or contact the BOLT team at uwBOLT@uw.edu.
NCTSN Breakthrough Series Collaborative for Supporting Trauma-Informed Schools
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Breakthrough Series Collaborative (BSC) for Supporting Trauma-Informed Schools to Keep Students in the Classroom is a unique opportunity to bring together expertise from the NCTSN using an established implementation and quality improvement methodology to spread and sustain evidence-based practices. Over the course of this eighteen-month initiative, schools and districts will increase time that students spend in the classroom while also positively impacting students’ engagement in learning, student well-being, school climate, school administrators, teachers, and support staff, families, and communities.
 
Applications to join are due October 12th. Please see the attached flyer or contact NCTSN at training@nctsn.org for more information.
School Mental Health Quality Improvement Spotlight

Adams-Friendship Middle School in Adams, Wisconsin received recent accolades about their school mental health services from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Alex Azar following his tour of the school with U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. During the site visit, HHS representatives listened to teachers, administrators, mental health professionals, law enforcement, students and parents about programs and services at Adams-Friendship that support positive school climate, health and safety in their school. Azar also acknowledged the state of Wisconsin for taking the lead on integrating mental health services into schools and for their Wisconsin School Mental Health Framework, noting that HHS is interested in extending “sophisticated, comprehensive services” like Wisconsin’s into more schools and communities, especially rural communities such as Adams. Read the entire article by Madison.com here

Wisconsin is one of 12 states (i.e., Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, New York City, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Washington and Wyoming) in the National Coalition for the State Advancement of School Mental Health driving statewide adoption of the National School Mental Health Performance Measures housed on the SHAPE System This National Coalition is hosted by the CSMH as a part of the School Health Services National Quality Initiative.

For more information about school mental health in Wisconsin, visit https://dpi.wi.gov/sspw/mental-health or https://www.schoolmentalhealthwisconsin.org/

Do you know a school mental health leader or team that we should feature in our School Mental Health Quality Improvement Spotlight? Send us your suggestions at csmh@som.umaryland.edu.
RESOURCES

SHAPE and School Safety
Many states, school districts and schools are using the SHAPE System to assess their comprehensive school mental health system strengths and gaps and use the customized reports and strategic action planning guides and resources to improve their CSMHS and advance school safety. The School Mental Health Profile on The SHAPE System allows schools and districts to map their current school mental health structure and operations and receive a free customized report. Click here for a sample School Mental Health Profile Report

NEW to SHAPE!-State Dashboard
The State SHAPE Dashboard allows state leadership team members to register for a SHAPE account and view SHAPE engagement in their state and collaborate with school and district teams if data sharing is enabled. Visit The SHAPE System today to learn more!

Back-to-School Transitions: Tips for Parents
The National Association of School Psychologists released a brief guide for parents and caregivers to help transition children and families back to the school year. Tips are given for before the school year begins, during the first week of school, choosing extracurriculars with children, and helping children to cope with anxiety and problems around starting school. The resource can be found under Back to School Transitions: Tips for Parents: https://www.nasponline.org/resources-and-publications/families-and-educators. Additional resources for families can also be found through this page.

Creating Conditions for Meaningful Family Engagement from Pre-K to High School
As the school year begins, it is important for students, parents, and educators to actively prepare for transitions into the new year. The U.S. Department of Education compiled a list of resources for starting the school year on a positive note.

Separated Children
As a follow up to resources shared in July’s newsletter about family separation and undocumented immigrant and refugee children, additional comprehensive resources have been created by the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health from the University of Michigan’s School of Social Work. Resources are provided for alternate caregivers, agencies, and schools to support children in understanding what has happened to them and how to cope with possible traumatic stress.

Secondary Traumatic Stress: A Fact Sheet for Child-Serving Professionals
This bulletin developed by SAMHSA’s Disaster Technical Assistance Center, describes how mass violence affects the behavioral health of adult, adolescent, and child survivors or witnesses of a mass violence incident. It illustrates the phases of response experienced by survivors, provides information on immediate and long-term interventions, and addresses the effects of media exposure following a mass violence incident. Public health, behavioral health, and emergency management professionals can use this resource to improve disaster behavioral health preparedness plans.
REPORTS

Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data summary and trends report 2007-2017
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) recently released the report, Youth Risk Behavior Survey: Data summary and trends 2007-2017. The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) provides the most recent surveillance data on health behaviors and experiences among high school students across the country. It reports on risks that contribute to the leading causes of death and disability among youth and young adults. In this current report, DASH uses YRBS data to focus on four priority focus areas: Sexual Behavior, High-Risk Substance Use, Violence Victimization, and Mental Health and Suicide. This report presents the 2017 data by sex, by race/ethnicity, and for sexual minority youth. It also examines linear YRBS trends for each focus area from 2007-2017.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/pdf/trendsreport.pdf?platform=hootsuite

2018 Kids Count Data Book
The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently released the 2018 KIDS COUNT® Data Book. The KIDS COUNT® Data Book is an annual comprehensive report produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation based on data from the KIDS COUNT Data Center, an online resource that provides data on child well-being over time from national and state organizations. The KIDS COUNT Data Center houses numerous key child and family well-being indicators and data points at the national and local levels. The 2018 KIDS COUNT® Data Book
features a comprehensive index of child well-being and includes a national profile and state-level rankings across four content domains: (1) Economic Well-Being, (2) Education, (3) Health, and (4) Family and Community.
http://www.aecf.org/resources/2018-kids-count-data-book/?platform=hootsuite
JOURNAL ARTICLES

The County Schools Mental Health Coalition: A Model for Community-Level Impact
Authors: Reinke, W., Thompson, A., Herman, K., Holmes, S., Owens, S., Cohen, D., Tanner-Jones, L., Henry, L., Green, A., & Copeland, C.
Journal: School Mental Health
Year: 2018
Abstract/Summary:
This paper describes a school-based mental health model for identifying, intervening, and referring students who are at risk for, or are exhibiting, mental health problems. This paper describes the County Schools Mental Health Coalition as a model for improving mental health outcomes for youth. The County Schools Mental Health Coalition, referred to here as the Coalition, is a multidisciplinary collaborative among six independent school districts and private schools residing in one county, and school psychology and social work faculty researchers from the local university. The Coalition was formed to overcome several barriers to children and youth receiving mental health supports. The barriers include lack of systems to adequately identify students early before mental health issues become severe, and lack of provision or access to evidence-based practices and interventions (EBPs) to ameliorate concerns or promote positive youth development. The manuscript describes how the Coalition has sought to overcome the barriers to support youth in county schools grades K to 12 through the creation of a tiered comprehensive system of early identification, prevention, and implementation of EBPs. The process and procedures utilized within this comprehensive data-based model are detailed, including how universal screening data are used at the county, school district, school, grade level, and individual student levels. In addition, case examples of universal, selective, and indicated interventions within this model are provided. Implications for research, practice, and policy will be discussed.

The Effectiveness of School-Based Mental Health Services for Elementary-Aged Children: A Meta-Analysis
Authors: Sanchez, A., Cornacchio, D., Poznanski, B., Golik, A., Chou, T., & Corner, J.
Journal: Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Year: 2018
Abstract/Summary: 
Objective: Given problems and disparities in the use of community-based mental health services for youth, school personnel have assumed frontline mental health service roles. To date, most research on school-based services has evaluated analog educational contexts with services implemented by highly trained study staff, and little is known about the effectiveness of school-based mental health services when implemented by school professionals.

Method: Random-effects meta-analytic procedures were used to synthesize effects of school-based mental health services for elementary school-age children delivered by school personnel and potential moderators of treatment response. Forty-three controlled trials evaluating 49,941 elementary school-age children met the selection criteria (mean grade 2.86, 60.3% boys).

Results: Overall, school-based services demonstrated a small-to-medium effect (Hedges g = 0.39) in decreasing mental health problems, with the largest effects found for targeted intervention (Hedges g = 0.76), followed by selective prevention (Hedges g = 0.67), compared with universal prevention (Hedges g = 0.29). Mental health services integrated into students’ academic instruction (Hedges g = 0.59), those targeting externalizing problems (Hedges g = 0.50), those incorporating contingency management (Hedges g = 0.57), and those implemented multiple times per week (Hedges g = 0.50) showed particularly strong effects.

Conclusion: Considering serious barriers precluding youth from accessing necessary mental health care, the present meta-analysis suggests child psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are wise to recognize the important role that school personnel, who are naturally in children’s lives, can play in decreasing child mental health problems.

Educational outcomes associated with school behavioral health interventions: A Review of the Literature.
Authors: Kase, C., Hoover, S. A., Boyd, G., Dubenitz, J., Trivedi, P., Peterson, H., & Stein, B.
Journal: Journal of School Health
Year: 2017
Abstract/Summary:
BACKGROUND: There is an unmet need for behavioral health support and services among children and adolescents, which school behavioral health has the potential to address. Existing reviews and meta‐analyses document the behavioral health benefits of school behavioral health programs and frameworks, but few summaries of the academic benefits of such programs exist. We provide exemplars of the academic benefits of school behavioral health programs and frameworks.

METHODS: A literature review identified school behavioral health‐related articles and reports. Articles for inclusion were restricted to those that were school‐based programs and frameworks in the United States that included an empirical evaluation of intervention academic‐related outcomes.

RESULTS: Findings from 36 primary research, review, and meta‐analysis articles from the past 17 years show the benefits of school behavioral health clinical interventions and targeted interventions on a range of academic outcomes for adolescents.

CONCLUSION: Our findings are consistent with reports documenting health benefits of school behavioral health frameworks and programs and can facilitate further efforts to support school behavioral health for a range of stakeholders interested in the benefits of school behavioral health programs and frameworks on academic outcomes.

Counseling, Psychological, and Social Services Staffing: Policies in U.S. School Districts
Authors: Brenner, N. & Demissie, Z.
Journal: American Journal of Preventive Medicine
Year: 2018
Abstract/Summary: 
Introduction: Schools are in a unique position to meet the mental and behavioral health needs of children and adolescents because approximately 95% of young people aged 7–17 years attend school. Little is known, however, about policies related to counseling, psychological, and social services staffing in school districts. This study analyzed the prevalence of such policies in public school districts in the U.S.

Methods: Data from four cycles (2000, 2006, 2012, and 2016) of the School Health Policies and Practices Study, a national survey periodically conducted to assess policies and practices for ten components of school health, were analyzed in 2017. The survey collected data related to counseling, psychological, and social services among nationally representative samples of school districts using online or mailed questionnaires. Sampled districts identified respondents responsible for or most knowledgeable about the content of each questionnaire.

Results: The percentage of districts with a district-level counseling, psychological, and social services coordinator increased significantly from 62.6% in 2000 to 79.5% in 2016. In 2016, 56.3% of districts required each school to have someone to coordinate counseling, psychological, and social services at the school. Fewer districts required schools at each level to have a specified ratio of counselors to students (16.2% for elementary schools, 16.8% for middle schools, and 19.8% for high schools), and the percentage of districts with these requirements has decreased significantly since 2012.

Conclusions: Increases in the prevalence of district-level staffing policies could help increase the quantity and quality of counseling, psychological, and social services staff in schools nationwide, which in turn could improve mental and behavioral health outcomes for students.

Enhancing the Relevance and Effectiveness of a Youth Gambling Prevention Program for Urban, Minority Youth: A Pilot Study of Maryland Smart Choices
Authors: Parham, B., Robertson, C., Lever, N., Palmer, T., Lee, P., Willis, K., & Prout, J.
Journal: Journal of Gambling Studies
Year: 2018
Abstract/Summary: Youth with problem gambling behaviors are susceptible to serious academic, behavioral, and mental health consequences including school failure, criminal involvement, and depression. Coupled with increased exposure to gambling formats, issues related to youth gambling have been deemed a serious public health issue requiring increased prevention efforts. However, the literature is limited in terms of evidence-based gambling prevention programs warranting the development of The Maryland Smart Choices Program (MD-Smart Choices), a gambling prevention program for middle and high school youth.
This 3-session, 45-min program was developed for implementation in Baltimore City Public Schools, an urban and predominately African American district with specific aims to engage students, encourage positive behavior, and facilitate learning related to gambling disorder. Pre–post program participation assessments were collected from 72 students across 5 different schools. Results yielded significant increases in student awareness and knowledge following participation in MD-Smart Choices. Focus group data collected from
program facilitators suggested high student engagement and participation, program feasibility, and ease of implementation. Study implications and future directions are discussed.
POLICY ANNOUNCEMENTS

Center for Disease Control and Prevention Rural Mental Health Policy Brief
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a policy brief on providing access to mental health services for children in rural areas, which provides policy makers with an overview of barriers to care in rural populations. The policy brief provides several avenues for policy makers to take to increase children’s access to care in rural areas such as telemedicine, school mental health centers, and integrating primary and behavioral healthcare.
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