Kentucky School Crisis Response Network - The Kentucky Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities will establish the Kentucky School Crisis Response Network, a statewide school crisis preparedness, mental health awareness, response, and linkage system across all 171 public school districts and approximately 1,477 public schools. Through 8 educational cooperatives, it will prepare regional teams and school, district, and community personnel for disasters, suicide deaths, violence, fatal accidents, and other traumatic events. Students generally ages 3-18, some through 21, plus school employees and families, will benefit. The PREPaRE curriculum will be supplemented by training on mental illness, safe de-escalation, suicide prevention and postvention, Kentucky crisis resources, warm handoffs, and team operations. Within 4 months, DBHDID will approve a statewide framework; by the end of Year 1, all 8 cooperatives will maintain active teams and locally adapted referral procedures. The project will provide 16 two-day PREPaRE workshops and train at least 480 new, unduplicated participants annually, or 1,440 over 3 years; at least 85% of participants with matched pre/post measures will demonstrate improvement. Beginning in Year 2, each team will complete an annual readiness activity, and each cooperative will complete 1 data-informed improvement action annually. It will build capacity rather than provide or replace clinical treatment.
