Region 9 School Mental Health Champions!
Welcome Fall
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“Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn”
― Elizabeth Lawrence
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Dear Region 9 School Mental Health Champions,
As we move into our fifth project year in service of you and the school mental health workforce, we sit in reflection about the learning, listening, and leading that has evolved over the years together.
A couple of highlights:
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Our regional school mental health webpage was launched in September 2021 and has received 1,044 pageviews; we hope to continue to build resources and content that can support you.
- More than 120 regional and national Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education) grantees attended our PS MHTTC programming in Year 4; we hope to continue to support AWARE leaders in our region and beyond.
- School mental health professionals represent the highest proportion of our Center’s training and technical assistance! We see you, lifelong learners.
- Our products, including project-developed resources and archived recordings, have been viewed or downloaded 26,374 times. Below are topics you continue to access.
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This coming year, we invite you to continue learning and growing our school mental health skills, knowledge, and capacities together. Coming your way?
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Updated products to ensure responsiveness and reflection of pandemic-informed needs
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Deeper dives into grief readiness, trauma-informed school policies, motivational interviewing techniques, and systems change approaches
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Wellness spaces, particularly for mental health professionals who identify as marginalized and not part of the dominant culture
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Resources and virtual learning sessions on topical needs of this moment, such as early elementary school age suicide prevention and self-harm
We hope that you continue to see us as a resource for creating or locating the content and coaching you need and want so that our work feels efficacious, supported, informed, and impactful.
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In this quarter’s newsletter, we offer new programming, research and resources, and so much more.
With deep respect, breath, and courage,
The Pacific Southwest MHTTC School Mental Health team
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The Pacific Southwest MHTTC is a SAMHSA-funded center serving American Samoa, Arizona, California, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau.
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GET IN TOUCH:
SPREAD THE WORD:
CONNECT WITH US ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
@PSMHTTC
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New No-Cost Opportunities from Our Center |
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NEW PROGRAM SERIES!
» Health Equity Literacy: Exploring the CLAS Standards as a Blueprint for Education, Healthcare, and School Mental Health Systems Collaboration
Session 1: November 29. An Introduction: How the National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services Standards (CLAS) Can Elevate Our School Mental Health Equity Commitments
Session 2: December 6. A Deeper Dive into the CLAS Standards: Mapping Health Equity Literacy onto Our Education and School Mental Health Systems
Session 3: December 13. Implementation and Sustainability: A CLAS Standards Learning Lab
How might we, as educators and healthcare professionals, impact the ongoing school mental health crisis together, in a systems-aligned approach? How might we, as educators, establish mutually beneficial partnerships with community healthcare providers and systems? How might weaving the worlds of health, public health, and education improve our ability to create equitable school mental health services and systems?
By...learning how to integrate distinctly different systems into a more cohesive network of support through shared cultural and linguistic standards!
Join the Pacific Southwest MHTTC for a three-part series aimed to increase our health equity literacy toolbox as school or systems leaders. In this series, we explore the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS), a set of 15 actions steps intended to advance health equity, improve quality, and help eliminate health care disparities. This is a tool developed for public health, not originally for school mental health; we offer this series to merge tools and systems for the benefit of our school outcomes.
Together, we examine how the CLAS standards can provide a pathway to ensuring cultural and linguistic appropriateness in the health care delivery system AND can be integrated to enhance your school mental health efforts.
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NEW PROGRAM SERIES!
» Getting Grief Ready at Work: A Starter Kit Workshop Series
The Pacific Southwest MHTTC team is dedicated and funded to provide the mental health and school mental health workforces with evidence-based practices.
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Join us as we approach what many of our colleagues consider to be the “holiday season” to explore how we can utilize the starter kit in our own management, supervision, leadership, and workplaces. The winter holidays are generally a time when family and friends gather for celebration, and the absence of someone who died can be particularly distressing. It can be a particularly difficult time for those who are grieving, even if the death occurred more than a year prior; by exploring the Starter Kit, we are better equipped to be ready and responsive and to cultivate a grief-sensitive culture.
- Grief Readiness: The basics & how grief impacts our workforce
- Self-Reflection: How grief ready am I? Is my team? Is my system?
- Approaching grief readiness with a power analysis, cultural sensitivity, and anti-racism at work
- Implementation science and grief readiness at work: the stages to navigating and confronting loss at work
- Being a manager, supervisor, or leader in the context of loss
- Crafting a grief readiness plan (including examining workplace culture, identifying areas to become more grief sensitive in culture, and exploring your bereavement leave policies for equitable shifts)
Each session includes opportunities to engage in questions, discussion, and discourse with our faculty and each other.
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Learning Opportunities From the Field
CONFERENCES
February 19, 2023 - Academy Day PreCon, Hilton Americas Houston, TX
February 20-21, 2023 - In-Person Conference, Hilton Americas Houston, TX
February 23-24, 2023 - Virtual Conference, online
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TRAININGS
November 10, 2022; December 8, 2022; January 12, 2023; and February 8, 2023, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. PT (view your time zone) I No cost
» New E-Course: Beyond the Land Acknowledgement: A self-paced e-course instructed by Megan Red Shirt-Shaw exploring land acknowledgements, the occupation of Native nations, “Land Back,” and the role of higher education.
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November is Children’s Grief Awareness Month and November 18 is recognized as Children’s Grief Awareness Day
In addition to our upcoming series on supporting grief sensitivity at work (see above), here are resources to guide our attunement to children’s grief, considering this month’s focus.
» Speaking Grief is a national public media initiative that includes a one-hour television documentary, media-rich website, social media campaign, and numerous community engagement events, all aimed at starting a national conversation about grief.
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What we're reading, listening to, and learning from
PODCASTS
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VIDEO TUTORIAL
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NEW RESOURCE
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RESEARCH BRIEF
» Calming Spaces in Schools and Classrooms (California Safe & Supportive Schools, 2022). This brief describes calming spaces and the potential positive impacts that offering such spaces in schools or classrooms can have on students’ mental health and learning. It features several examples of calming spaces and related resources from California and beyond, provides an explanation of how calming spaces align with other initiatives for supporting student well-being, and offers practical guidance for educators to consider when setting up their own calming spaces.
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OP-ED
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JOURNEY MAP
» School Mental Health & Wellness Acronym Journey Map is a visual teaching tool with accompanying dialogue prompts for use by coaches in their work with school and education leadership teams. It is intended to help school communities visualize the similarities, differences, and desired outcomes of common campus support initiatives. When combined with the dialogue prompts, coaches can help school communities detail what is needed to actualize, implement, and properly message common student support initiatives such as trauma-informed practices, SEL, equity work, MTSS, and more.
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SCHOOL-BASED POLICY PEER GUIDANCE
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UPDATED RESOURCE PAGE FOR SCHOOL SUICIDE POSTVENTION
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REPORT
» Leveraging State Plan Amendments and Medicaid Waivers to Expand School Mental Health Services in Medicaid (Southeast MHTTC, 2022). Every state’s Medicaid program has different requirements for reimbursing school mental health services. In many cases, expanding coverage of these services in Medicaid requires seeking approval from the federal government for a State Plan Amendment (SPA) and/or a Medicaid waiver. In this short report, the Southeast MHTTC introduces SPAs and Medicaid waivers and gives examples of how states have leveraged SPAs and Medicaid waivers to expand coverage of school mental health services in their Medicaid programs.
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YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH REPORT CARDS & POLICY GUIDANCE
» The Hopeful Futures Campaign offers national report cards that score every state on policies that support school mental health, with recommendations for how to improve. Here are the links to the states in our region (unfortunately, they do not provide report cards on the Pacific Islands):
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POCKET GUIDE
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NEW INITIATIVE
» Anti-AbleistED evolves educational equity to include ability and provides expert consulting to schools, networks, districts, states, and organizations across the country to break down silos and inequities that disproportionately impact students with disabilities.
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Contact the Pacific Southwest MHTTC
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Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and content expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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