mental health

The US Department of Education has published a model emergency-response and crisis-management plan for schools, which is now available at www.ed.gov/emergencyplan. Mental health issues are an important part of this plan. Based on lessons learned from scho ...

All children and youth have a human right to quality public education in safe and supportive learning environments. Such an education provides a foundation for access to higher education, meaningful employment and full participation in society. Although a ...

Juvenile justice probation and detention workers play an important role in helping system-involved youth and families navigate justice and social service systems; achieving goals of accountability, competency, and community safety; and promoting safety, s ...

Excerpt: This resource is intended to help educators understand how they might address the interplay of race and trauma and its effects on students in the classroom. After defining key terms, the guide outlines recommendations for educators and offers ...

Each year, nearly 380,000 minors experience “unaccompanied” homelessness — meaning they are homeless and without a parent or guardian — for a period of longer than one week. (1) These young people, much like their adult counterparts, are often cited, arre ...

Educators, mental health professionals and other community leaders are about to conclude a year of education on how to make Hancock County more sensitive to the needs of people who have suffered trauma. But, they say, the work is just beginning. The Ha ...

On October 23, 2007, a 14-year-old boy at the Kennedy Middle School in Springfield, Massachusetts, was arrested after he refused to walk with a teacher to her office and instead returned to his classroom. According to the police report, he yelled at the t ...

Screening and assessment of traumatic stress and its psychosocial after-effects play an important role in a trauma-informed juvenile justice system. Trauma exposure and its negative consequences are highly prevalent among justice-involved youth. For examp ...

Excerpt: School-based police officers, known as school resource officers (SROs), have become a common and growing presence in schools across the nation. The presence of law enforcement in school, while intended to increase school safety, has also been ...

Prevalence rates of mental illness among U.S. children and adolescents continue to show that American youth are facing a mental health crisis. Among all children, about 1 in 5 youth have a diagnosable and treatable psychiatric disorder, yet only a quarter ...

Every day, hundreds of thousands of youth cycle in and out of state and local juvenile justice systems throughout the county. They are seen in probation offices, juvenile detention centers, juvenile courts, and correctional facilities every day. Many of t ...

There has been a growing interest in placing sworn law enforcement officers in schools as School Resource Officers (SROs) as a means of improving school safety and improving relations between police officers and youth. However, when this project began in ...

Research suggests that approximately 25% of American children will experience at least one traumatic event by the age of 16. A child's reactions to trauma can interfere considerably with learning and/or behavior at school. However, schools also serve as a ...

This guide was written to educate policymakers about the scope and impact of childhood trauma, to offer effective solutions that can be implemented with the support of informed public policy, and to provide information about additional resources. The Nati ...

Example cooperative agreement between public school system, police department, child welfare, district attorneys, behavioral health services, and juvenile justice.

Juvenile courts nationwide handle cases referred by schools for truancy or behavioral incidents. Since 2012, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) have trained jurisdictions on strategies and policies to reduce the number of re ...

The term complex trauma describes the dual problem of children’s exposure to traumatic events and the impact of this exposure on immediate and long-term outcomes. Complex traumatic exposure refers to children’s experiences of multiple traumatic events th ...

This manual summarizes the major activities of the Connecticut School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI); an initiative funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The manual is intended to aid communities in developing their ...

This Brief describes how partnerships developed by Network members and police agencies are helping to create a trauma-informed law enforcement system.

Excerpt: Communities of color have a long-standing history of inequitable treatment by the police in the U.S. In recent years, activists with the Black Lives Matter movement have helped to raise the profile of the destructive treatment of the black comm ...

High rates of suspensions and expulsions are daunting problems affecting many California schools. In part, these rates are the result of Zero Tolerance policies enacted in the early 1990s to improve school safety. Although Zero Tolerance policies original ...

The first issue of the series describes why creating trauma-informed child-serving systems is necessary and suggests specific competencies that systems can adopt to work effectively with traumatized children and their families.

The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges joined by the Honorable Steven Teske, Chief Judge, Clayton County, Georgia, introduces and discussed the steps to develop a MOU during this interactive online training. A memorandum of understand ...

Disparities in the use of school discipline by race, gender, and sexual orientation have been well-documented and continue to place large numbers of students at risk for short- and long-term negative outcomes. In order to improve the state of our knowledg ...

Throughout the 1990s, the rise of zero-tolerance school discipline policies resulted in the widespread adoption of strict and mandatory responses for a large range of misbehavior in school. An unintended consequence of these policies and practices were yo ...

The webisode held 11/15/2016 "explored the changing role of law enforcement in addressing youth and young adults with a mental illness. The program will discuss evidence-based strategies to combine efforts of police officers, mental health educators, and ...

Fueled by increasingly punitive approaches to student behavior such as “zero tolerance policies,” the past 20 years have seen an expansion in the presence of law enforcement, including school resource officers (SROs), in schools. According to the U.S. Dep ...

Dealing with a child’s traumatic experience is confusing and stressful for parents as well as for the child. They wisely seek help, but the search for help can itself be confusing. How do parents know whether a proposed treatment has a good chance of work ...

Excerpt: Research shows that youth who have supportive caregivers have better outcomes than youth with less supportive caregivers. This is true across the juvenile justice, child welfare, behavioral health, and education systems. Youth whose caregiver ...

To successfully identify and treat adolescents with traumatic stress and substance abuse, clinicians must continually explore better ways to encourage their participation in treatment. This is particularly important in mental health and substance abuse se ...

Excerpt: This Toolkit provides practical tools and resources to assist law enforcement agencies in building or enhancing effective operational responses to children exposed to violence (with or without a mental health partner). This toolkit contains t ...

Therapeutic treatment of the psychosocial after-effects of childhood exposure to traumatic stressors is a key component in the development of trauma-informed juvenile justice systems (Kerig, 2012). More than 80% of juvenile justice-involved youth report a ...

Disciplining students, particularly those with chronic or serious behavior problems, is a longstanding challenge for educators. They must balance the needs of the school community and those of the individual student. At the heart of this challenge is the ...

The NCMHJJ convened several meetings to review possible options for a final Strategic Innovation Group project to be undertaken by the Mental Health/Juvenile Justice Action Network. By the end of the meetings, several important areas were identified: tra ...

Children depend on their families for support and reassurance. This is especially true following a traumatic event when a child’s belief in the safety and predictability of the world has been undermined. But trauma does not affect the child alone.The effe ...

In the nine years since Congress reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), startling growth has occurred in what is often described as the “School-to-Prison Pipeline”1 – the use of educational p ...

The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice (NCMHJJ) and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) for the four-part webinar series. The series will explore the fundamental components of developing effective school-b ...

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Youth Justice Board, an after school program that engages New York City teenagers in studying public policy issues that affect young people. Since August 2012, the Youth Justice Board has focuse ...

In the name of public safety, Black children in Oakland are being arrested at vastly disproportionate rates. This derails their opportunities for educational success while failing to ensure our children’s safety. From Report Card to Criminal Record: The I ...

The first webinar in this series of four provides an overview of two school-based diversion initiatives that emerged from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change Mental Health/Juvenile Justice Action Network, and that have be ...

Learning is not just a cognitive process. Research shows that powerful social and emotional factors affect learning. Some of these factors involve social relationships. These social factors include the teacher's relationship with the student, the student' ...

This report examines available mental health services in school settings in Connecticut and summarizes the benefits and challenges of expanding these services to meet the current need. It also offers a framework to guide policy development and systems ref ...

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan issued the first ever national guidelines for school discipline in public schools, in an effort to keep more students in class and reduce racial disparities in punishment. The fed ...

Excerpt - There has also been little research on how youth behaviors and decision-making influence police–youth contact (Brunson and Weitzer 2011), or on how officers’ concerns for community safety and their own safety influence these interactions. ...

Large numbers of youth involved with the juvenile justice system have significant mental health and substance abuse issues. Many of these youth could be better served in community settings, and juvenile court judges can lead or support community efforts ...

The zero tolerance policies that were adopted by many local and state education agencies in the 1990s had the unintended effect of unnecessarily introducing low-risk youth to the juvenile justice system for disruptive behaviors that are very typical of ad ...

The most disadvantaged, troubled students in the South and the nation attend schools in the juvenile justice systems. These children, mostly teenagers, usually are behind in school, possess substantial learning disabilities, exhibit recognizable behavior ...

As the education of our children – our nation’s future – and the school-justice connection has increasingly captured public attention, the sunshine of increased graduation rates has brought into sharp focus the shadow of the so-called school-to-prison pip ...

Excerpt: The “school-to-prison pipeline,” a term that has garnered a great deal of attention in recent years, describes the direct link between exclusionary school discipline practices and students’ subsequent involvement in the juvenile justice syste ...

Experiences of elevated, prolonged stress or trauma rock the very core of children and young people. In these circumstances, children are overwhelmed with the internal reactions that race through their brains and bodies. They do anything to survive, not b ...

The last twenty years have seen a remarkable increase in the criminalization of American schools and students. What officially began in 1994 with the signing of the federal Gun Free School Zone’s Act (GFSA), has escalated from a series of reforms intende ...

Excerpt: Several high-profile incidents of violence at U.S. schools have, understandably, raised concerns about the safety of students while at school. Just one incident of violence causes significant harm. In light of this, it is important to examine ...

Passed in the 2014 legislative session, Substitute House Bill 2739 (Chapter 196, Laws of 2014) directs that an analysis examine the effects of community factors such as economic well-being, safety and family challenges on academic and youth success. In c ...

Historically, most educators have recognized two primary aims of school discipline: (a) managing student behavior, relying primarily on the use of teacher‐centered techniques for preventing and correcting misbehavior and (b) developing self‐discipline, co ...

These comprehensive documents are intended for educators who work primarily with preschool, elementary, middle school, and high school students, respectively. They describe how to identify children in the four age groups who may be experiencing traumatic ...

This chapter will address the excessive use of suspensions and other disciplinary actions against Black males who are disengaged from school. Academically disengaged students often come to school late, miss assignments, have difficulty understanding schoo ...

Severe trauma in children causes toxic stress in kids, which can damage the brain and lead to the child being put in a flight, fight, or fright mode that is physiologically impossible to learn in. Being a trauma-informed school means shifting the discipli ...

Severe trauma in children causes toxic stress in kids, which can damage the brain and lead to the child being put in a flight, fight, or fright mode that is physiologically impossible to learn in. Being a trauma-informed school means shifting the discipli ...

Humans are born to learn, but we don’t learn in isolation. We learn based on positive relationships and interactions with peers and in environments like schools that foster opportunities for students and staff to learn and grow together. Educators recogni ...

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative, developed as a collaboration of the U.S. Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), and Justice (DOJ), strengthens the role of schools as healthy environments that support the acad ...

The NCJFCJ has published this guide as part of a larger project addressing school discipline referrals to the juvenile justice system. The project aims to reduce the number of referrals to the juvenile justice system for school based behaviors through the ...

Some policymakers have expressed renewed interest in school resource officers (SROs) as a result of the December 2012 mass shooting that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. SROs are sworn law enforcement officers who are assigned to w ...

For students and educators to achieve their full potential, safe schools are fundamental. Students who report feeling safe in school are more engaged in class, have higher academic achievement, and have lower rates of absenteeism, truancy, and behavioral ...

The third webinar in this series of four provides strategies for identifying youth who are both at risk of juvenile justice system referral from the school setting and who may have behavioral health needs. On this webinar, experts will discuss the most ef ...

This webinar profiled Connecticut’s school-based diversion programs, developed with help from the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change initiative and technical assistance from the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, to reduce the f ...

Excerpt: "The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools has a core focus on the important work of connecting schools to resources and organizations that can improve health outcomes of students. There are many different partners in our communities t ...

Farmington, CT – Four Connecticut schools were selected as partners in the Connecticut School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI) for the 2013-2014 school year. SBDI is an interagency state and local partnership supported by the Connecticut Judicial Branch, ...

In 2008, the new Mental Health/Juvenile Justice Action Network selected “early diversion” as its first area of focus. Its goal was to create opportunities for youth with mental health needs to be diverted as early as possible from involvement with the juv ...

Youth who become involved with the juvenile courts have many common background risks. These risks are related to the individual (e.g., early aggression, mental health problems, substance use, trauma, education deficits, special education disabilities), fa ...

Exert from website: The SAEBRS is a brief tool supported by research for use in universal screening for behavioral and emotional risk. The measure falls within a broad class of highly efficient tools, suitable for teacher use in evaluating and rating a ...

Exert from website: "The SAEBRS is a brief tool supported by research for use in universal screening for behavioral and emotional risk. The measure falls within a broad class of highly efficient tools, suitable for teacher use in evaluating and rating ...

This Field Guide is written for Assistant Attorneys General, Child Protective Service Specialists (case managers), County Attorneys, Court Appointed Special Advocates, Behavioral Health Treatment Providers, Juvenile Probation and Parole Officers, and Scho ...

Many students across the Nation struggle with emotional and behavioral problems that may lead them to act out in ways that school administrators and teachers might not understand or be prepared to respond to effectively. In today’s era of highstakes testi ...

In the early 1990s, many schools adopted zero tolerance policies, which mandate the use of specific disciplinary consequences—often severe and punitive—in an effort to increase school safety. Originally designed to reduce weapon-carrying in schools, these ...

Over the last several years, various communities have suffered incidents of targeted violence in schools and colleges. Communities such as Newtown, Connecticut; Santa Barbara, California; Columbine, Colorado; Paducah, Kentucky; Blacksburg, Virginia (Virgi ...

Ironically, zero tolerance policies once promoted as a solution to youth violence have created a school to prison pipeline. Widespread discipline practices of suspension, expulsion, and arrest for school behavior problems are turning kids in conflict int ...

Prior to the passage of the Gun Free Zone Act of 1994 (GFZA), school administrators and educators were largely responsible for addressing students' misbehavior in school. However, since the implementation of GFZA, there has been an increasing number of sc ...

This toolkit provides a step-by-step guide for implementing some of the core principles and activities of the full SBDI initiative. A simple-to-use checklist is included to guide you through implementation of key SBDI elements. There are self-assessment q ...

RESEARCH AND DATA ON SCHOOL DISCIPLINE practices are clear: millions of students are being removed from their classrooms each year, mostly in middle and high schools, and overwhelmingly for minor misconduct. When suspended, these students are at a signif ...

The last webinar in this series of four addresses the crucial role that embedding structural supports such as memorandums of agreement (MOAs), graduated sanction grids, and trainings into the diversion initiative will play in the success and sustainabilit ...

Traumatic events cause terror, intense fear, horror, helplessness, and physical stress reactions (for example, heart beating fast, strong startle, stomach dropping, shakiness). The impact of these events does not simply go away when they are over. Instead ...

The impact of students’ life experiences on their behavior has garnered increasing attention as schools strive to develop more supportive academic environments that address the needs of at-risk youth and facilitate continued academic engagement. Few event ...

Children of all ages in the United States are increasingly being exposed to violence and victimization. While the types of violence and levels of exposure differ for children of different ages, rates of interpersonal violence and victimization of 12-to-1 ...

Throughout the United States violent crime has seen a marked reduction—reports of violent crime have decreased from 1.4 million in 2007 to 1.2 million in 2011. In the past few years, a growing awareness in high percentage rates of the detention of mentall ...