National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention

New Guide: Engaging School Administrators
The National Center has published a guide to provide SS/HS project directors with strategies that can be used to engage school administrators and enhance their commitment to the SS/HS initiative. Engaging School Administrators: A Guide for Safe Schools/Healthy Students Project Directors draws on lessons learned from SS/HS implementation sites and discusses methods for building and sustaining partnerships. To access the guide, visit http://www.promoteprevent.org/Publications/ESAguide/index.htm.

Two New Members on the Grantee Council
The National Center and the Communications Team are pleased to announce two new members on the Grantee Council:

The Grantee Council is a forum for grantees to gain insight and offer feedback on how the National Center and the Communications Team can provide technical assistance that best meets grantees’ needs. The Grantee Council is composed of former and current SS/HS project directors who represent diverse demographic and programmatic characteristics.

Resources and Events for Rural Communities
On October 11, 2007, the Communications Team hosted a distance learning event that featured three rural SS/HS grantees and their communications efforts. A recording of this event is available at http://www.sshs.samhsa.gov/communications.

The next rural Webinar, Rural Web Portal: Creating State-Community Partnerships for Social-Emotional Well-being in Rural America, will take place on Thursday, November 1, 2007, 1:00–2:30 p.m. (Eastern). This Webinar will help participants become familiar with several key federal grant programs to improve children’s mental and behavioral health, including CMHS Systems of Care, Safe Schools/Healthy Students, Circles of Care, National Child Traumatic Stress, Statewide Family Networks, and Suicide Prevention. Presenters will discuss the benefits of not only building strong partnerships between state-level and community partners but also enhancing linkages across federal grantee programs for community mental and behavioral health. The Webinar will also provide opportunities for participants to explore current efforts and how challenges can be addressed to build a strong and effective voice for rural individuals in their communities and states. To register, visit https://tapartnership.on.raindance.com/confmgr/.

For more information about these events and resources, visit the Rural Portal: Healthy Children and Families at http://www.promoteprevent.org/rural. This portal was developed through the collaboration of several technical assistance centers of SAMHSA/CMHS grant programs. It provides a valuable technical assistance resource to communities working to transform systems for children’s behavioral health in rural and frontier areas.

The following is a summary of key findings from the fields of education, mental health, violence prevention, and/or youth substance abuse prevention.

Educational Attainment, Violence, and Crime
A recent publication by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) summarized a number of research studies exploring the relationship among educational attainment, violence, and crime. Collectively, this research makes a powerful argument that resources invested in schools may provide extraordinary returns by reducing crime and the consequences of crime. For example, the research summarized in this publication revealed the following:

The authors of the study point out that between 1970 and 2003, spending on corrections increased 2.5 times as fast as did spending on education and libraries (at the state and local level). They recommend that states and communities consider money spent on education to be a long-term investment that will eventually be repaid by reducing crime and promoting economic development and civic involvement.

The JPI report Education and Public Safety can be downloaded at no cost from the JPI Web site at http://www.justicepolicy.org/images/
upload/07-08_REP_EducationAndPublicSafety_PS-AC.pdf.

This section highlights a few updates from the prevention field. Please go to http://library.promoteprevent.org/ for more news items and resources.

Important Factors to Dropout Prevention Often Overlooked
A recent issue of The Progress of Education Reform summarizes the findings of five studies that investigate predictors of school dropout rates and school characteristics linked to higher graduation rates. The findings of these studies suggest that the causes for dropping out are not confined to students’ social backgrounds and school behaviors; rather, a school’s structure and organization can also influence a student’s decision to drop out or stay in school. Implications of this research for policy are briefly discussed and relevant resources for further reading are listed. To access this publication, visit http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/75/33/7533.pdf.

Early School Success: A Look at Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades
The National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University recently released a brief that investigates absenteeism in elementary school and preschool years. A National Portrait of Chronic Absenteeism in the Early Grades examines children across various incomes and race and ethnicity groups in a nationally representative sample of children entering kindergarten in 1998 and finds that chronic absenteeism in the early school years has a detrimental effect on academic success. The effects of early absenteeism on academic achievement and later absenteeism are discussed. Read this report at http://www.nccp.org/publications/pub_771.html.

Building More Comprehensive Student Support in Schools
The Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA has released a report that summarizes research findings on organized efforts to address significant barriers to learning and teaching by providing student support in schools. New Directions for Student Support: Current State of the Art synthesizes data collected on organizational and operational infrastructure related to student supports from a sample of school districts. It also reveals data from a survey conducted to determine what efforts are being made to develop more systemic approaches for addressing barriers to learning and teaching. The report concludes with four major recommendations for districts engaged in improving their systems of student support. It is available online at http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/policyissues/
Current%20State%20of%20the%20Art.pdf.

November 13, 2007, is Mix It Up at Lunch Day, sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance program. Mix It Up at Lunch Day is a whole-school effort that calls for students to take a new seat in the cafeteria. Making this move allows students to cross social lines of division, meet new people, and make new friends. Planning ideas and materials, along with outcome stories from other schools that have participated in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, are available at http://www.tolerance.org/teens/.

The Grant Opportunities page is updated regularly with announcements of current public and private grant competitions. Here is one of the listings you will find:

Title: Public Welfare Foundation Youth Program
Funder: Public Welfare Foundation
Description: The Youth Program makes grants to support:

Award: Varies
Eligibility: Letters of inquiry of up to five pages should be submitted six to eight weeks before the next proposal deadline. The Foundation does not fund individuals, scholarships, direct services, or endowment campaigns. Foundation staff will respond to letters of inquiry within 30 working days to let applicants know whether they will be invited to submit a full proposal.
Deadline: November 30, 2007 and March 21, 2008
For more information: http://www.publicwelfare.org/index_files/youth.htm

We regularly add to a detailed listing of conferences, events, and calls for papers occurring within the National Center and across the nation.

Date: November 12–16, 2007
Location: Colorado Springs, CO
Title: School Resource Officer Leadership Program
Sponsor: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
Description: The purpose of this program is to demonstrate standards of excellence and best practices in the enhanced role of school resource officers as leaders in planning and maintaining a safe school environment. Topics covered include: leadership role of the SRO in developing and implementing a safe school plan, critical incident planning, school security, information sharing, identification and utilization of risk and protective factors, and legal issues.
Web site: http://dept.fvtc.edu/ojjdp/sro.html

Date: November 15, 2007
Location: Audioconference/Conference call
Title: Achieved Shared Goals through Systematic Integration of Education and Mental Health
Sponsor: Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development
Description: This call will explore the evidence base for school mental health services and the differences between programs and systemic change in the school arena. In addition, it will address how youth guided policies and services contribute to the overall integration of school and mental health.
Web site: http://www.tpronline.org/
event.cfm?id=0014CF99-1143-E5D9-6DF185890442C3E9