Project Name: Nevada Project Aware 2020
Introduction: The Nevada Department of Education, working alongside its State and Community partners, will increase mental health awareness, screening, and connections to community-based mental health services within a framework of Multi-Tiered System of Supports across three Local Education Agencies (LEA): Washoe County School District, Carson City School District, and the Nevada State Public Charter Authority.
Populations to be served: Washoe County School District (WCSD) is Nevada’s 2nd largest school district in a county that covers 6,300 square miles with more than 471,500 citizens; WCSD serves 64,402 majority-minority students in 117 primary and secondary schools across 19 zip codes. Carson City School District is Nevada’s 6th largest school district in a rural county that spans 157 square miles with about 55,400 citizens; Carson City serves more than 7,800 students in 13 primary and 1 secondary schools across 11 zip codes. (American Community Survey, 2019); Nevada’s State Public Charter School Authority (SPCA) sponsors 29 charter schools statewide and is the 3rd largest school district in Nevada, serving approximately 36,000 students.
Goals: Tier 1 Goal: Increase awareness of mental health issues among school-aged youth.
Tier 2 Goal: Provide training for school personnel and other adults who interact with school-aged youth to detect and respond to mental health issues. Tier 3 Goal: Connect school-aged youth, who may have behavioral health issues (including serious emotional disturbance (SED) or serious mental illness (SMI), and their families to needed services
Objectives (not all shown): Objective 1A: By September 2021, 17 pilot schools (across the LEAs) will implement or strengthen evidence-based, culturally competent strategies so that school-aged youth develop skills that will promote resilience and promote pro-social behaviors, evidenced by pilot schools: (1) moving from favorable to most favorable in 3 out of the 5 student school climate survey constructs by 2025 and (2) year to year reduction of school discipline incidents (3) 10,642 unduplicated students will be served by enhanced tier 1 strategies across the 3 LEAs. Objective 2B: By May 2023, 17 pilot schools will implement mental health screening and training to detect early signs of mental health issues, identify strengths in school-age youth, and help accurately refer to school based tier 2 or tier 3 supports and refer to community based support for tier 3 clinical services, as evidence by: (1) screening process in place, (2) # of students screened each year (3) # of school based referrals (4) # of community based referrals. Objective 4B: Develop an infrastructure that will sustain and expand mental health and behavioral health services and supports for school-aged youth when federal funding ends by being able to bill for Medicaid for eligible services.
Numbers of Unduplicated Students Served by this project
Approximately 10,642 unduplicated students will be served by this grant with Tier 1 supports, 20-25% (2660) of those students may need Tier 2, and 10-15% (1,596) of those students may need Tier 3. Our goal is that by the end of the grant, the percentage of the students needing Tier 2 and 3 services will significantly decrease as well. Our theory of change is as we strengthen Tier 1 activities, need for Tier 2 and 3 will decrease.
