Mental Health Partnership Expands  Options for Supporting Youth

Post date: Oct 24, 2012 9:4:56 PM

Centennial High School in Champaign CUSD 4 is partnering with Community Elements, a local mental health agency, to strengthen and expand their multi-tiered system of support for students.  As a result, the mental health partners have recently initiated a time-limited, instructional group intervention for youth who have experienced trauma.  The school-based team reviewed data and identified five youth in need of this intervention.  This systems team, which includes the mental health providers, is closely monitoring the progress of the students to ensure success.

Early indicators of progress include a reduction in office discipline referrals (ODRs) and out of school suspensions (OSS) for the participating students.  Prior to the start of this intervention, these students collectively had 45 ODRs and four OSS over a six month period.  Since the intervention began in February 2012, the collective ODR total has dropped to 15 and there has been only one OSS.  Parents and students will be surveyed at the end of the intervention to further assess effectiveness.  The school social worker co-facilitates the group intervention, thus building capacity for school-based personnel to provide this type of specialized intervention.