Saturday, November 23, 2024
11/23/2024
The purpose of Wisconsin’s AWARE 2023 project is to: 1. Increase the implementation of comprehensive school mental health in rural communities. 2. Improve the quality of services for all students, especially those who are marginalized. This project will address the challenges rural communities face in providing comprehensive multi-level strategies and supports to school-aged children and youth. Two Local Education Agencies (LEA) will partner with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (WDPI) to implement the Wisconsin School Mental Health Framework, creating sustainable systems to provide mental health literacy and stigma reduction, screen and identify students in need of more intensive services, and establish crisis protocols to support students in immediate need of treatment. Wisconsin’s most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (2021) data confirms that our students continue to be experiencing significant emotional distress, particularly students of color, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, and students who identify as female. The School District of Crandon and the Wabeno Area School District enroll 1,260 students. Fifteen percent of those students identified as LGBT, 29 percent American Indian (AI), and 55 percent White. Twenty-seven percent of students reported self-harm including 35 percent of AI students, 68 percent of LGBT students, and 39 percent of females. Twenty-two percent of AI students reported at least one suicide attempt, as did 26 percent of LGBT students and 15 percent of females. This data is heartbreaking and a strong motivator to action. Wisconsin Project AWARE 2023 will address the mental health challenges faced by our most vulnerable students in the partner LEAs and rural communities across Wisconsin. The project’s design will utilize regional agencies to provide additional coaching and training support to their local school districts. The regional agency will support, at minimum, two LEAs per year of the grant, making the number of students served approximately 4,892 students annually and approximately 20,000 students over the life of the grant. The WDPI along with our State Mental Health Agency (SMHA) partner, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, will support LEAs to create strong community collaborations. This process will create a system of care approach and improve cross agency coordination, making access to needed services more seamless for students and families. Working with a team coach, LEAs will fully implement a system that includes multi-levels of support, focused on promoting well-being, and providing secondary prevention and brief intervention services; creating a crisis response protocol that enables the school and community to support immediate mental health needs of children and youth. Using continuous quality improvement cycles, LEAs will be able to quickly respond to actions and strategies that are not working and make necessary changes. Wisconsin expects to see reductions in the number of students reporting suicide ideation, increases in the number of LEAs who implement comprehensive mental health systems that are trauma-informed and culturally responsive, improvements in policies supporting marginalized youth, and improvements in the quality of the services provided across the rural communities participating in the grant project.
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).
