Friday, November 22, 2024
11/22/2024
Project Creative AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education) is led by the Los Angeles County Office of Education’s (LACOE) Center for Distance and Online Learning, to serve all 79 school district and charter districts in the county. CDOL has created a powerful partnership with state, county and local mental health agencies and nonprofits to create a collective impact on Creative AWARE participants, including the following: (1)Network of support-suicide prevention: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Local Chapter; National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) & Local Chapter; LA Suicide Prevention Network; LA DMH Partners in Suicide Prevention Unit; LA Suicide Prevention Center; L.A. Child and Adolescent Suicide Review Team; CalHOPE; (2) LGBTQ+ support: LA Cnty. Gay & Lesbian Ctr./Local Trevor Proj. ; GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance. (3) Community support: LA Dept. of Parks and Rec.; LA Dept. of Arts and Culture (use of Community Centers). (4) University support & coursework: Calif. State Univ. Los Angeles; University of Southern California (5) Student Voice: Directing Change; Spotify, Student Empowerment Conferences. The project will build on CDOL programs to help districts and their schools create sustainable mental health and suicide prevention intervention and postvention programs to support mental health of all students and stem the tide of major increase in behaviors leading to suicide, especially among high-risk youth. CDOL programs include its Suicide Prevention Ongoing Resiliency Training (SPORT) & TEAL/SEL, program that integrates SEL, culturally/linguistically relevant arts, media arts, and strategies for English Learners into content areas, through a blended (online/in-person) curriculum. The project integrates well established programs, activities, strategies (such as PREPaRE, CBITS, and DBT), as well as newer strategies (Check In-Check Out, and Student Ambassadors) that will be evaluated. Creative AWARE will provide more intensive services to 4 districts it has selected because their student populations represent various geographic areas in LA County, differing racial demographics, high percentages of Socio-Economic Disadvantaged (SED), and large populations of English Learners, and high-risk students (LGBTQ+, Females; African American/Black; Latino; and Asian students), students in non-traditional schools). The project will serve annually over 600 (3,000 total) teachers, administrators, school and community health professionals (with potential for many more), and close to 2,000 (10,000 total) students, as well as family members during the project. Most of these students have suffered greater depression, trauma, grief, bullying and harassment, violence, and attempted suicides than other youth. The project will make most services available through in-person and virtual training for All 79 LEAs in Los Angeles County. The project has 3 goals: (1)Create, develop and sustain partnerships and collaborative relationships with schools, universities, mental health and nonprofit agencies to implement mental health related promotion, awareness, prevention, intervention, and resilience activities that are culturally and linguistically responsive to ensure that school-aged youth are connected to appropriate and effective behavioral health services. (2) Increase capacity of adults (school staffs, school and community mental health professionals, families, university professors and preservice teachers) to support and improve youth mental health. (3) Increase the capacity of students to improve their mental health and prevent suicide and other acts of violence, and show improvement in key indicators of mental health. The project has 9 objectives and other performance measures that will be evaluated each year. All project measurements and outcomes are dedicated to support districts/schools with a sustainable infrastructure for inclusive mental health/wellbeing practices for school-aged youth.
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).
