The Board of Education of the City of Chicago, District 299, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) proposes the Sustainable Infrastructure for Crisis Response & Continuum of Care project. Through a SAMHSA Project AWARE grant the district could create a much-needed permanent crisis intervention and prevention infrastructure. The population of focus is the district’s high school communities, including students and their families and caregivers, staff, and educators in geographic Networks 14, 15, 16, 17. While these schools span the city, the majority are on the south and west side, and encompass communities of color, of which, most are historically disinvested. Demographic data shows that the majority of CPS high school students, 80% on average, come from families facing economic hardship, while 14% are learning English, 17% live with a disability, and 89% are youth of color.
CPS needs to enhance its crisis response infrastructure to: 1) ensure students have the social and emotional learning supports and resources they need, and 2) fill the gaps in our existing response mechanisms to ensure the continuity of care for students during the school day.
CPS proposes the Sustainable Infrastructure for Crisis Response & Continuum of Care project to create a coordination of care response team within the Office of Social Emotional Learning that coordinates across CPS departments, high school staff, and our community behavioral health services partners. This team will become the anchor of support throughout the lifecycle of a crisis. By the end of the award period our partnerships with community behavioral health service providers will achieve a ratio of 1 clinician for every 2 CPS High Schools within their assigned network.
Goals include:
1. Ensure every CPS high school student referred for crisis intervention, receives group and/or individual social-emotional counseling services through school-based community partners at identified school sites. To do this, we need each community partner to be responsible for a smaller number of schools. Eventually, reaching a 1:1 ratio.
2. Expansion of certified Youth Mental Health First Aid trainers in the district to provide and train additional related service providers.
3. Provide universal CPS staff training on student substance use and supportive measures
4. The Mental Health Training Specialist will train school staff (nurses, social workers, counselors, discipline staff) on Screening, Brief Intervention, & Referral to Treatment.
CPS proposes to:
1) Serve all high school students in need both annually and throughout the project. The district’s current high school population is 16,600+ students; and
2) Provide social and emotional mental health response and awareness trainings to 2,300 staff, teachers, and other educators.