Behavioral Health/Mental Health

Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) has been the “guiding light” for citywide collaboration, supporting an improved relationship between the Rochester School District (RSD) and the City of Rochester. The Rochester Recreation Department (RRD) is a key partner in this collaboration, which directly supports Rochester youth with new programing and access to key relationships. These connections offer validation to the RRD for their critical role in the life of the city.

The Family Center in Concord School District (CSD) is a district-wide early child development program focused on strengthening the home-school connection for Concord families with young children. With a boost from Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) funds, the program has expanded to four Concord locations.

Pennsylvania is integrating five previously discrete SAMHSA-sponsored initiatives to create a comprehensive system of care for families, children, and youth with behavioral health needs from birth to adulthood.

Pennsylvania has administered a statewide Student Assistance Program (SAP) across all the Commonwealth’s 500 school districts since 1985. SAP aims to develop and maintain mental health wellness and a safe and drug-free environment in schools and communities. It is designed to assist school personnel to identify misuse of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs, as well as mental health concerns that may pose a barrier to a student’s success. Additionally, SAP responds to such issues and concerns through collaborative prevention, intervention, and post-intervention services.  

Pennsylvania’s SS/HS initiative has developed a protocol to guide community-level teams in identifying and selecting well-founded programs and practices to address salient student and school needs that fit the local circumstances and context. The protocol is designed to be used by an inclusive team involving educators, student and family representatives, as well as system partners.

Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) implementation within Pennsylvania’s overarching system of care partnership is creating numerous new opportunities for schools at the center of their communities. This strategy is generating great benefits for comprehensive approaches to address the consequential role of trauma in the lives of local students and their families in several school districts throughout Crawford and Lehigh counties.

School professionals and students across all seventeen school districts in York County, Pennsylvania formed an active student-led Youth Mental Health Alliance (Alliance) that serves as a catalyst “to end the stigma of mental illness, and to ensure that mental-health resources are available to everyone who needs them”—especially the county's youth.

SS/HS provided the opportunity for school districts in Michigan to reduce silos and partner and collaborate with families, schools, and community partners. As a result of increased focus on authentic family engagement and empowerment, 2,700 families across all three LEAs were actively engaged in school activities since implementation in 2013-14 academic year.

Ohio is one of seven states awarded a Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) grant in 2013 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services.