Leading for Implementation and Systems Change

Read the excerpt from the keynote address by Kathryn Power, Director of Center for Mental Health Services, given at the SS/HS New Grantee Meeting, November 3, 2009.

"The Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant program is driven by a vision: that all children will be able to reach their full academic and personal potential by feeling safe in their schools, their communities, and themselves.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students program makes it easier for children to feel safe in themselves by reducing the factors that place them at risk for failure and by increasing the protective factors that contribute to success. Through Safe Schools/Healthy Students programs, children are encouraged to:

• Develop the social and emotional skills that support learning,
• Build resilience in facing life challenges, and
• Avoid substance abuse and other behavioral problems that can lead to school failure, delinquency, and other costly consequences.

The common denominator of our program efforts is to promote and protect the mental health of children as the essential foundation for education. Why are we so concerned about their ability to learn? – Because an education prepares children for life. For children, and particularly for children whose mental health challenges may place them at risk of failure, an education can be the difference between a life lived on the edge of promise and one filled with promise.

Entire communities must come to understand mental health and how it affects the overall health and development of children, including their academic development.

We can point proudly to the Safe Schools/Healthy Students program as a catalyst for transformation at the community level, beginning with a cultural change in the ways a community approaches mental health. Safe Schools/Healthy Students programs are based on the awareness that the mental well-being of children is not the sole responsibility of the family and a mental health provider. Instead, mental health care is now recognized as a public health issue. As such, the mental health status of children affects every member of the community and is the responsibility of every child-serving organization within the community.

To illustrate, consider the tragedy of a school shooting such as Columbine – lives lost, families shattered, and a community torn by grief. Now compare that outcome with the experience of the North Star school district in Fairbanks, Alaska. In April of 2007, a concerned parent became aware of frightening rumors. Some students at North Pole Middle School reportedly were planning a Columbine-like school shooting. When local law enforcement officials were alerted, they reached out quickly to the school district’s safety officer, a position created through Safe Schools/Healthy Students funding. The safety officer immediately brought both school administration and the local Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative on board.

The end result was that – through the Safe Schools/Healthy Students collaborative partnership – the crisis was averted safely and the different agencies were able to coordinate their response. According to Fairbanks SS/HS Project Director Heather Stewart, “We knew we needed a community plan – not just a school plan.” Law enforcement focused on the investigation and subsequent arrest of six students. The school district, in collaboration with the local Safe Schools/Healthy Students initiative, took on the task of thoroughly informing the community about the crisis. Together, they also engaged a variety of organizations in providing critical follow-up support services to students and their families.

In this case, the SS/HS program worked as intended by uniting a community in prevention and intervention in children’s mental health. As this anecdote illustrates, the Safe Schools/Healthy Students program is a vehicle for instilling transformative values throughout a community. With effective leadership:

• Partners develop a shared vision among community agencies and schools to create safer schools and healthier students;
• Agencies learn how to collaborate, using a common language and focusing on a common outcome; and
• A community creates an integrated infrastructure that supports collaboration and coordinated services.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students program works by bringing multiple service systems together to address overlapping concerns. Through collaboration, the mental health, education, and justice systems are making greater use of evidence-based practices that take a comprehensive approach to prevention and treatment. Additionally, these systems are improving outcomes through shared data and decision-making.

By stressing cultural competence, the Safe Schools/Healthy Students program is helping to ensure that community-based systems develop a stronger capacity to prevent, diagnose, and treat childhood mental health problems among minorities who are more likely to receive less care and care of lower quality.

The Safe Schools/Healthy Students program represents both an opportunity and our responsibility as leaders of child-serving systems. Eighty-one million children younger than age 19 are now growing up in the United States. Normally, we refer to children as our future. In reality, we are their future. Children depend on us to promote and protect their mental health as the foundation for their success in learning and in life."