Wednesday, May 21, 2025
5/21/2025
UR Supporting Our Students: Strengthening School Mental Health Staff Response to the Mental Health needs of Teens - UR Supporting Our Students will enhance the capacity of middle and high school educators within the NY Finger Lakes (FLX) region to support adolescents with behavioral health (BH) needs, including those with serious emotional disturbances (SEDs). This will be accomplished via 1) implementation of a Project ECHO® [Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes], paired with Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) and 2) development of new adolescent BH referral streams. Our first goal is to enhance school-based workforce capacity to identify, approach, refer, and support teens with BH needs. Obj.1a: Improve and deepen school-based workforce knowledge, skills, and confidence in adolescent BH via 5-month county-specific UR-SOS Project ECHO®s. Selected school BH leaders (inc. school mental health staff, administrators, nurses, teacher leaders, and parent reps) will participate in twice-monthly ECHO® sessions focused on enhancing school team’s knowledge, skills, and confidence in (1) recognizing and approaching youth in distress, (2) school-based safety planning, (3) brief crisis intervention & de-escalation strategies, (4) referral to treatment & community resources, and (5) special considerations regarding SEDs. This is followed by case-based learning paired with expert and peer consultation, resulting in a teach-all learn-all model. With videoconferencing technology, school teams can participate in trainings from their own communities, a model well-suited to expanding capacity within rural communities like those found in the FLX. Obj.1b: Expand school-based workforce capacity via development of YMHFA trainers. A member of each school’s ECHO® team will be trained as a YMHFA trainer, and will deliver at least 3 YMHFA courses in their communities, offering others the skills they need to support to adolescents struggling with BH challenges. Our second goal is to facilitate development of referral streams for adolescent BH. Obj. 2a: Develop new school-based referral stream to a regional outpatient center for BH intervention offered by licensed child & adolescent BH providers. Obj. 2b: Enhance community knowledge and tools to support adolescent BH via creation of a community resource directory and toolkit. Impact: 90 ECHO® sessions will be held over 5 years, including 10 in Y1 and 20 in each Y2-5. ECHO® participants will include between 30-56 school personnel from 5-7 schools in Y1, and 60-112 from 10-14 schools in Y2-5, serving 45-66 schools and 225-504 unduplicated individuals. We will also train 16 ECHO® members as YMHFA trainers annually, totaling 80 new YMHFA trainers in 5 years. To disseminate knowledge across the FLX region, each trainer will train between 30-90 community members in YMHFA, totaling 2400-7200 unduplicated community participants. In total, BH awareness training will be offered to 2265-5984 individuals. UR-SOS will also develop a new school-based referral stream to UR-Medicine’s Crisis Intervention Service, a regional directory identifying at least 10 adolescent BH services, agencies, and resources, and a toolkit with 20 tools, screeners, checklists, and other resources; and a bank of 90 PowerPoint slides and recordings of trainings.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).