Federal Government launches Safe Schools/Healthy Students

VOLUME 30 , NUMBER 7 July/August 1999

APA helped to shape the initiative, which features several psychologist-designed initiatives.

By Rebecca A. Clay

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention esti-mates that fewer than 1 percent of child homicides occur in or around schools, even the fear of violence can impede learning. Witness what happened in the aftermath of the Littleton, Colo., shooting last spring: Vague threats of violence kept students all over the country home from school.

Now the federal government is taking action to prevent violence and help the nation's schoolchildren feel secure enough to learn. In April, the Clinton administration announced a new $300 million Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative. Designed to promote a community-wide response to recent school shootings, the initiative will help schools and other institutions better meet children's mental health needs. APA helped shape the initiative, which will feature several programs developed by psychologists and encourage more psychologists to get involved in schools.

The initiative is co-sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program of the Department of Education and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ's Office of Community Oriented Policing will provide an additional $80 million for hiring law-enforcement officers to work in schools.

"Youth violence is everybody's business," says Brian W. Flynn, EdD, deputy director of SAMHSA's Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS). "You don't have to have kids in schools to be interested in school violence. The violence happens in the context of communities."

A broad-based approach

That community emphasis pervades the initiative. In fact, Flynn hopes that local communities will see the inter-agency cooperation at the federal level as a model they can follow at the local level.

The program's first phase exemplifies that collaborative approach. Starting this fall, 50 school districts across the nation will receive up to $3 million a year for three years to develop comprehensive programs aimed at preventing violence and promoting healthy child development. To receive federal funding, a school district must create a formal partnership with the public mental health system and police department in its area and must include students, families and community-based organizations.

Possible programs include mentoring, family strengthening, antidrug curricula, staff development, conflict-resolution training, after-school activities or even the purchase of security equipment and related services. No matter what the activity, each school's program must provide mental health services to all students and include procedures for referring, treating and following up with students with serious mental health problems. Each grantee must build evaluation into its program; a national evaluation will also take place.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students Initiative will eventually have four additional components:

A community-action program will award grants to communities that want to expand violence-prevention efforts beyond the educational, law-enforcement and mental health organizations typically involved in such work.

A technical assistance program will help schools and communities implement programs and will collect and disseminate information about the various models being used. Possible activities include a violence-prevention summit and an Internet database accessible to the public.

A violence-prevention awareness campaign will target organizations interested in children's well-being, such as parent-teacher associations, universities, foundations, consumer groups, businesses and faith communities.

Another grant program will promote the development of pro-social video games and other technologies that could help prevent violence.

Psychologists' role

Where do psychologists fit into the initiative? "Everywhere!" says Flynn.

In fact, psychologists have already gotten involved in the initiative. At the government's request, APA provided feedback on an early draft of the proposal. In a letter to SAMHSA, APA stressed its enthusiasm for the enterprise.

One of the program's strengths is its emphasis on building resilience, says Daniel Dodgen, PhD, who helped review the initial proposal.

"Quite frankly, 99.9 percent of schools are never going to experience violence like Littleton did," explains Dodgen, senior legislative and federal affairs officer in APA's Public Policy Office. "This proposal says, 'Let's not focus all of our attention on something that's rarer than Halley's comet. Let's broaden our approach to include problem behaviors that really do happen frequently and where we can make a detectable difference.'"

In its feedback to SAMSHA, APA also offered some constructive criticism, which was well received by CMHS Director Bernard Arons, MD. Specific suggestions included beefing up the initiative's evaluation component, ensuring that programs can be generalized to other settings and enhancing the initiative's sensitivity to cultural and other differences among students.

Thanks to the initiative's emphasis on evidence-based practices, psychologists will also have a role to play as schools launch their programs. In fact, about half of the sample programs suggested in the initiative's original proposal were developed by APA members. Several more programs suggested by APA were later added to this list.

Flynn predicts that the initiative will not only increase the number of psychologists working in schools but will also increase their visibility.

"The integration of mental health, education and justice at the federal level is really exciting," says Flynn. "If that happens in communities, this initiative will be very successful."Y

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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