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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Evelyn Frankford, MSW, Massachusetts Department of Social Services, Executive Office of Health and Human Services, 24 Farnsworth Street, Boston, MA 02210, 617 748-2087, efrankford@verizon.net

Not only are schools strategically the best places to deliver children's mental health services and programs, they are where most of them are now provided. Unfortunately, service delivery is fragmented and inadequate, resulting in frustration for children who need help and, equally, for teachers and school administrators who want to overcome behavioral and emotional barriers to children's learning. Still, pilot projects that seek to establish comprehensive mental health interventions often encounter resistance from educators and service providers themselves, which when combined with lack of a clear funding stream for these interventions, pushes them into the “pilot graveyard.” To avoid the “pilot graveyard” destiny of such projects, Massachusetts is undertaking state-initiated systems change, building on current projects and on-going work, with a goal of embedding them in evidence-based frameworks to create more comprehensive public mental health school-community partnerships involving state agency and local education leadership, as well as family and youth. This session will offer a progress report from this unique state initiative to institutionalize a public mental health school-based framework, through provision of financial assistance to regional education organizations, peer-to-peer technical assistance, and integration of the resources of current pilot projects.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify strategies for engaging state policy leadership in advancing school-based mental health services and programs
• Improve techniques for working with stakeholders to implement school-based mental health practice
• Develop strategies for building comprehensive school-based mental health initiatives from existing pilot projects in a geographic area

Keywords: Child/Adolescent Mental Health, Policy/Policy Development

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered