- Child Welfare and School Mental Health
Description
Children and families in the child welfare system face myriad needs that compromise their mental health and well-being. In response to the complex needs of children in the child welfare system and their foster/biological families, a growing trend is for child welfare organizations to collaborate with other service providers, such as mental health, health, juvenile justice, schools, and substance abuse treatment providers. Our goal as a practice group is to provide resources and share information across individuals and groups who are interested in building collaborative relationships related specifically to addressing the mental health needs of this population, especially opportunities to address their needs through school mental health practice, research and policy.
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- Connecting School Mental Health and Positive Behavior Supports
Description
This practice group is a conduit for families, researchers,
administrators, and practitioners to find common interests and practices
related to SMH and PBS. PBS approaches are designed to prevent
problem behaviors by proactively altering the environment before
problems begin and concurrently teaching appropriate behavior.
School-wide positive behavior support systems support all students
along a continuum of need based on the three-tiered PBS prevention
model. SMH can be thought of as a framework of approaches
that promote children’s mental health by emphasizing prevention
programming, positive youth development and school-wide
approaches. These approaches call for collaboration among mental
health providers, educators, families, related service providers and
school administrators in order to meet the mental health needs of all
students. By working collaboratively, this practice group seeks to
clarify the relationship between PBS and SMH in order to promote
seamless practice at the local level.
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- Connecting School Mental Health with Juvenile Justice and Dropout Prevention
Description
This practice group is committed to working across stakeholder groups
to advance knowledge and best practice related to effectively
integrating school mental health with juvenile justice and dropout
prevention. We believe that, for youth to be successful, effective
coordination and communication across systems is needed, and
resources and best practice guidelines related to this work need to be
readily available. Key priority areas include effective strategies for:
addressing the School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPP); reducing truancy,
unnecessary suspensions and expulsions, dropout, and delinquency;
promoting successful school reentry and transitions; and professional
development for school and juvenile services staff.
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- Education: An Essential Component of Systems of Care
Description
Welcome to the work of the Education: An Essential Component of Systems of Care Practice Group! We hope that you will engage with us as we bring together families, youth, mental health, school, juvenile justice, child protection, juvenile justice and school partners to identify persistent challenges, new opportunities and effective practices that improve youth outcomes at home, at school, and in the community.
We are excited about this "new" SharedWork website and urge you to join this practice group (see box on right side of page) and join the effort. Please consider participating in a discussion, submitting documents that you find to be important and helpful, and responding to the opportunities that will be announced on this site.
Thank you and, welcome!
Practice Group Facilitators:
Patti Derr - Texas Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health
Joan Dodge - National Technical Assistance Center, Georgetown University
Debra Grabill - IDEA Partnership at NASDSE
Sandy Keenan - TA Partnership, American Institutes for Research
Ed Morris - University of Missouri
Joyce Sebian - National Technical Assistance Center, Georgetown University
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- Family-School-Community Partnerships
Description
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- Improving School Mental Health for Youth with Disabilities
Description
The purpose of this practice group is to promote collaboration between
education agencies and mental health agencies and services providers
to facilitate the delivery of quality mental health services to students
with disabilities in the school setting. By promoting better
collaborative efforts education and mental health agencies benefit from
shared learning and shared service delivery and students with
disabilities are more likely to receive appropriate and inclusive
programs and services mutually designed to assist the student to
successfully achieve targeted goals.
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- Learning the Language/Promoting Effective Ways for Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Description
Learning the Language: Promoting Effective Ways for Interdisciplinary Collaboration. This practice group promotes understanding in the language used across interactive systems across mental health and education. This practice group is currently facilitating the development of a glossary to more effectively deliver services in ways that are accessible and easily understandable to all systems of care stakeholders. Our key priorities are: 1) To demystify the vocabulary used; 2) To add increased value to state and local educational/family/youth services agencies currently implementing expanded, school mental health services/programs; 3) To promote a better understanding of how we communicate across systems/stakeholders; and 4) To build stronger relationships across systems of care for families, students, and professionals involved in expanded, school mental health. 5) To update, build and interpret growing glossary, and facilitate related discussion and article repository
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- Practice Group Facilitators
Description
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- Psychiatry and Schools
Description
This group will focus on issues related to psychiatric services in schools. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the roles of psychiatrists who work in schools, and interdisciplinary collaboration among psychiatrists and other professionals working in schools, including primary health care professionals. One of the goals will be to consider what kind of training is needed for psychiatrists to be effective school consultants and providers. Other important issues include the development of guidelines for appropriate medication prescribing in schools, and ways to utilize psychiatric services optimally in the face of severe shortages of child and adolescent psychiatrists. This discussion group is open to psychiatrists, educators, school health professionals and all others with an interest in this topic. We hope this forum will encourage psychiatrists who work in schools and those who interact with them to share their experiences and challenges. We hope this joint effort will lead to the development of effective recommendations and, ultimately, improved psychiatric support in schools.
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- Quality and Evidence-Based Practice
Description
The mission of the Quality and Evidence-Based Practice Group is to
provide resources and promote sharing of information across
individuals and groups interested in improving the quality of school
mental health (SMH) programs and services. Priority areas include:
improving dissemination and sharing of evidence-based practices in
SMH; bridging the research-practice and practice-research gaps in the
field; and, understanding and promoting the use of the best student-
and program-level evaluation strategies.
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- School Mental Health for Military Families
Description
Proposed Vision: To develop and implement a comprehensive array of school-based programs and services to support military students, family, and community.
Proposed Objectives:
• To promote a full continuum of mental health promotion and intervention programs and services to include early identification and intervention, prevention, evaluation, and treatment
• To remove barriers to learning and improve the academic success of students
• To enhance strengths and protective factors in students, families, and the school community
• To promote the quality of life and wellness in military families
• To provide training, staff development, and research opportunities to improve children’s and adolescents’ mental health and education
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- Building a Collaborative Culture for Student Mental Health
Description
Building a Collaborative Culture for Student Mental Health was formerly called Social, Emotional and Mental Health in Schools. This practice group has as its primary objective to promote the active exchange of ideas and collaboration between school employed and community employed mental health providers, educators, and families. This exchange is to support the social, emotional and mental health and the academic success of all children and adolescents. Research suggests that the social/emotional health of children and adolescents is linked to their academic and overall success in schools. A collegial, invitational approach to working together will allow all professionals and families to effect positive systemic change resulting in better informed and skilled school personnel to address the needs of students. By working together in a collaborative and creative manner, school, family, and community resources can better serve the educational and social/emotional needs of all students and assist in ensuring good mental health.
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- Youth Involvement and Leadership
Description
This practice group is focused on advancing youth involvement and leadership in school mental health. Priority areas include: 1) Expanding youth leadership, participation, and input at local, state, and national levels, 2) Advancing the development and implementation of strategies and approaches that promote greater youth leadership at all levels of the service systems that support them, 3) Supporting efforts by the national community of practice and its practice groups to promote meaningful youth involvement and leadership, 4) Organizing a dialogue around greater inclusion of youth in meaningful ways in all facets of school mental health, 5) Developing and promoting best practices and innovative approaches for youth involvement and leadership, 6) Serving as a resource for educators and practitioners to develop strategies and approaches that teach new skills that help advance youth involvement and leadership in schools and communities.
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The National Community of Practice on Improving Teacher Quality: General and Special Education Collaboration is sponsored by the Center for Improving Teacher Quality (CTQ) to help states reform, improve and align their teacher licensing systems for GENERAL and SPECIAL education teachers of students with disabilities. This national community was generated by the collective thinking of members of CTQ State Teacher Quality Teams and is central to the work of the Center. The community emphasizes the importance of standards for GENERAL and SPECIAL education teachers in serving students with disabilities and supports strong collaboration between highly qualified teachers as essential to improving the outcomes for all children.
CTQ is funded by the Office of Special Education Programs(OSEP) at the U.S. Department of Education. It is a national technical assistance center focused on working with states to develop models for ensuring and raising the quality of teachers of students with disabilities. For additional information about CTQ, visit the Center for Improving Teacher Quality's website at: 
Welcome to the NACPIC community page. Please feel free to post documents, work on joint projects, share new ideas and give input on different initiatives. NACPIC is a broad coalition of self advocates, service providers, researchers and educators who have come together to explore ways we can use our combined knowledge and resources to support parents with cognitive and intellectual challenges. Through this coalition we exchange information about promising practices and techniques, access new tools and curricula, help to build a national research and service agenda, develop legal and human service policies; give a national voice to parents and practitioners and contribute to system change activities that move us forward together.
