National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention

Upcoming YVPP and TCE Sustainability Teleconference on April 6, 2006
Finding and Developing Foundation Funding, the third in a series of five YVPP/TCE sustainability teleconferences, will take place on Thursday, April 6, from 1:00–2:30 p.m. EST. The first part of this teleconference will consist of an overview of the resources provided by the Foundation Center (http://fdncenter.org), led by a Foundation Center staff member. Next, Renée Wilson-Simmons (National Center staff) will present strategies for communicating effectively with foundations. As a follow-up, each grantee will be provided with a tailored list of foundations in their state/region. Registration information for the April 6 teleconference will be sent to invitees by e-mail. Please contact your Technical Assistance Specialist with any questions.

To view the materials from the March 2, 2006, sustainability teleconference, Communicating for Sustainability, click here. To view the materials from the February 2, 2006, sustainability teleconference, Planning for Sustainability: Leaving a Legacy, click here.

Safe Schools/Healthy Students Evaluation Workshop
On March 1–3, 2006, SS/HS 2005 grantees gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Safe Schools/Healthy Students Evaluation and Technical Assistance Workshop. At this training, grantees learned how to complete a logic model and design and begin an evaluation plan. To view the agenda and materials from this meeting, please visit the Conference Materials Archive. For other helpful evaluation resources, click here.

New Partnership with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
The National Center has partnered with the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Established in 1994, CASEL provides practitioners and school administrators with the guidelines, tools, informational resources, and support they need to improve and expand their social and emotional learning (SEL) programming. CASEL has earned a reputation for projects and products grounded in rigorous science.

CASEL will develop materials for SS/HS grantees that explain how the SEL framework can facilitate grantees’ work. For example, grantees sometimes find the language of mental health off-putting. SEL provides a vocabulary for many of the same concepts but is more familiar to school staff. Many of the key elements of the SS/HS grant, including creating a safe school environment, alcohol and other drug and violence prevention and early intervention programs, school and community mental health preventive services, early childhood psychosocial and emotional development programs, and education reform, can be supported and sustained through effective SEL.

For additional information about SEL, related research, and CASEL, please go to
http://www.casel.org.

Expanding and Sustaining Programs Through Communitywide Capacity Building
Sandusky City Schools
Sandusky, Ohio
SS/HS grantee

We want to hear from you!
Send us your own Grantees at Work story. If you’ve developed a creative solution to a problem you’ve faced, come up with interesting ideas for programs or events, or successfully implemented strategies that you think would be useful for other grantees to hear about, please e-mail a brief description and your contact information to news@promoteprevent.org. You could be featured in an upcoming Grantees at Work story, and your experiences could help other grantees! It will help you get local publicity, too.
To read past Grantees at Work stories, go to
http://www.promoteprevent.org/grantees_at_work/.

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

SAMHSA announces changes to the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP)
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a report describing the changes being made to the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP). This report contains information on the broadened base of NREPP, which will now include treatment of substance use and mental disorders in addition to prevention of substance abuse and mental health problems. SAMHSA is also changing the process through which programs and practices will be identified and evaluated for initial and ongoing inclusion in NREPP. SAMHSA plans to initiate reviews using the new NREPP review process in the summer of 2006. For specific details regarding NREPP’s new review system, read the Federal Register report at http://modelprograms.samhsa.gov/pdfs/FRN%20posting%20March1406.pdf.

Attorney General Gonzales unveils plan to combat gang violence
The U.S. Department of Justice will dedicate $30 million in grant funding to support new and expanded anti-gang prevention and enforcement efforts under the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative. These new funds will allow local PSN task forces to combat gangs by building on the effective strategies and partnerships developed under PSN. The Justice Department will establish a comprehensive gang prevention and anti-gang enforcement program in six communities experiencing a significant gang problem. This program will incorporate prevention, enforcement, and reentry efforts to address gang membership and gang violence at every stage. Each community will receive approximately $2.5 million: $1 million to support comprehensive prevention efforts such as the Gang Reduction Program, which focuses on reducing youth-gang crime and violence by addressing the full range of personal, family, and community factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency and gang activity; $1 million to help support enforcement programs that will focus law enforcement efforts on the most significant violent gang offenders; and $500,000 to create mentor-based reentry assistance programs that will provide transitional housing, job readiness and placement assistance, and substance abuse and mental health treatment to prisoners reentering society. To view the press release, go to http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/February/06_opa_082.html.

“Focus on Families! How to Build and Support Family-Centered Practices in After School”
This new resource, developed by the Harvard Family Research Project, is a guide to understanding how to engage families in after-school programs. This is a resource for after-school providers looking to create or expand an existing family engagement program. The guide offers a research base for why family engagement matters, concrete program strategies for engaging families, case studies of promising family engagement efforts, and an evaluation tool for improving family engagement practices. The guide has three sections: section 1 presents current research on the benefits and challenges of engaging families after school; section 2 describes strategies that after-school programs can use to engage families; and section 3 offers in-depth profiles of three after-school programs actively working to engage families. Additional information at the end of the guide includes a list of suggested readings and Web sites for engaging families. To read the guide, go to http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/content/projects/ afterschool/
resources/families/guide.pdf.

“How the Justice System Responds to Juvenile Victims: A Comprehensive Model”
This edition of the OJJDP Juvenile Justice “Bulletin” introduces the concept of a juvenile victim justice system, identifying the major elements of the system by delineating how cases move through it. This juvenile victim justice system is a complex set of agencies and institutions that include police, prosecutors, criminal and civil courts, child protection agencies, children’s advocacy centers, and victim services and mental health agencies. The “Bulletin” reviews each step in the case flow process for child protection and criminal justice systems and describes the interaction of the agencies and individuals involved. To read this publication, go to
http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=210951.

New report on immigrant families’ involvement in education
The Center for Law and Social Policy recently released “Reaching All Children? Understanding Early Care and Education Participation Among Immigrant Families,” a report that summarizes evidence about the participation of young children of immigrants in early care and education programs. The following are some of the key findings presented in the paper:

The paper also provides an overview of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of immigrant families that influence children’s participation in early learning programs and discusses policy recommendations for state and local administrators of early care and education programs. To read the report, go to http://www.clasp.org/publications/child_care_immigrant.pdf.

“National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign,” April 3-7, 2006
The National Association of Students Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) and www.GuidanceChannel.com have partnered to establish the National Youth Violence Prevention Campaign. The goal of this campaign is to raise awareness and to educate students, teachers, school administrators, counselors, school resource officers, school staff, parents, and the public on effective ways to prevent or reduce youth violence. During this weeklong national education initiative, campaign “strategy sponsors,” including Teaching Tolerance, the American School Counselor Association, the Association for Conflict Resolution, National Youth Court Center, and Youth Service America, will offer activities, information, and spokespersons to support each day’s focus through the campaign’s Web site, http://www.ViolencePreventionWeek.org/.

The Grant Opportunities page is updated regularly with new announcements of available public and private grant competitions. Here is just one of the listings you'll find:

Title: Mentoring Initiative for System Involved Youth
Funder: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Description: OJJDP’s Mentoring Initiative for System Involved Youth will provide funds to agencies to enhance and expand existing mentoring strategies, and to develop, implement, and pilot-test mentoring strategies and programs designed for youth involved in the juvenile justice system, reentry, or foster care.
Award: Up to $400,000
Eligibility: Applicants are limited to public agencies (including state agencies, units of local government, public universities and colleges, and tribal organizations) and private organizations (including secular and faith-based nonprofit organizations).
Deadline: April 17, 2006
For more information: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/grants/solicitations/06mentoringinitiative.pdf

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

Date: May 31-June 2, 2006
Location: San Francisco, CA
Title: 2006 Juvenile Justice National Symposium: Building Alliances to Improve Outcomes
Sponsor: Child Welfare League of America
Description: The symposium will focus on multisystem alliances between juvenile justice and child welfare as a crucial piece of working to better serve our nation's children.
Web site: http://www.cwla.org/conferences/2006jjsymposiumrfp.htm