Use universal screening to improve student well-being

Key points:

The pandemic shed light on the mental health crisis our students face, but student well-being is not a new phenomenon. According Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Data from 2009-2019, 1 in 5 adolescents ages 12 to 17 reported experiencing at least some type of major depressive episode.

Now, taking a closer look at the impact of the pandemic, the CDC found that more than a third of high school students reported experiencing poor mental health during the pandemic, 44 percent reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless during the year past. and nearly 20 percent had seriously considered attempting suicide. But, again, this is not a new phenomenon: the pandemic has simply intensified the mental health crisis facing young people, and there is no doubt that we have work to do.

Establishing a foundation for student well-being means having met the student's basic psychological and safety needs, and creating predictable and consistent routines and procedures while establishing school-wide expectations. You have laid the foundation, but we need to do more. Educators must also intentionally build relationships to foster a sense of community and connection, while establishing strong support networks for both students and adults. Fostering these protective and resilient factors must be intentionally focused, because they do not come solely from individuals but are shaped by the environments we create.

Traditionally, schools have focused on student well-being from a risk-free perspective. However, the absence of risk does not equate to the presence of socio-emotional skills. When we focus on developing skills that foster resilience, we create protective factors in students, while positively impacting all the best practices we use in education. Benefits students' ability to follow school-wide expectations through Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS), to repair harm when it occurs through restorative practices, and to help students be present and fully participate in The instruction.

As Martin SeligmanThe father of positive psychology said: “I think psychology has done very well in figuring out how to understand and treat illnesses, but I think that's literally half done. If all you do is work to solve problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to bring people to zero, to neutrality.” When we react to student problems that come to the surface, many times this is what we end up doing.

To change course, we must be more proactive in identifying what prosocial skills students are demonstrating and what skills need to be strengthened to prevent students from relying on unproductive responses that not only get them into trouble, but can also lead to bad outcomes. mental health outcomes. –and we need to do it through a strength-based lens.

Dual model framework

Research shows that the best way to promote student well-being is through a dual model of resilience and risk framework that focuses on the development of strengths or protective factors to promote early identification and prevention of risk factors. This framework prioritizes all components of a trauma-sensitive approach, as recommended by SAMHSAand aligns with guidance from the National Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland (NCSMH). Ensuring you have a clear vision of the framework your district will follow will be beneficial as you move forward with next steps. Regardless of which framework you choose, a comprehensive approach ideally includes universal screening for your students so that we have a reliable and valid way to identify student strengths and have an early indicator of risk.

What is universal screening?

According to the National Center for School Mental Health, universal screening is the evaluation of students to determine if they may be at risk with respect to their well-being. Screening can be done school-wide or at specific grade levels, but it is purposefully broad, trying to detect as many students as possible who may need interventions. And screening is simply designed to identify a risk factor so we can act quickly and effectively using that reliable data. It shifts the focus from a reactive “wait to fail” model to a proactive system where needs are identified early and interventions are delivered efficiently.

Having that data allows us to intentionally monitor students' strengths and needs over time, and using universal screening proactively is considerably more cost-effective compared to a reactive approach that tends to lead to longer or highly intensive support. . The challenges many districts face that prevent them from starting universal screening are simple: not knowing what reliable and valid measures are available, budget constraints, and limited resources and support. Districts simply need guidance and know that there are resources available that they can take advantage of.

How One District Implemented Universal Screening: Roswell ISD Case Study

Cynthia Price is a district behavior specialist for the Roswell Independent School District in New Mexico. Recently, the district focused on building multi-tiered systems of supports (MTSS), or what they call multi-tiered systems of supports, for behavior, with a shift from focusing solely on special education interventions to building systems of support preventive and specific throughout the world. behavior and social-emotional learning.

The district was seeing an upward trend in special education identification and increased reliance on special education staff to guide interventions for students with behavioral and social-emotional needs. The mindset was that special education already has the space and practices in place. But the district quickly realized it needed to establish targeted prevention and interventions, or risk continued increases in special education eligibility and a lack of support for highly intensive interventions.

The district determined it needed a universal assessment of social-emotional behavior skills and took a step-by-step approach, starting with research. District officials read guidelines from the National Center for School Mental Health and SAMHSA to really understand how to get started. The next step was to conduct a needs assessment of the current system.

The district used the School Mental Health Quality Assessment and the PBIS Tiered Fidelity Inventory. He NCSMH School Mental Health Quality Assessment allowed the district to self-assess best practices for mental health and behavior in a single system. The district used a variety of general education and special education stakeholders to rate its quality domains, which included team building, needs assessment, mental health assessment, Tier 1 mental health promotion, early intervention, and treatment in Tier 2 and Tier 3. The district considered funding sources and impact on student learning.

This gave district administration the confidence and “why” to move toward taking a multi-faceted approach rather than relying on one initiative to support mental health and behavior. Additionally, school mental health quality assessment provided the foundation to show stakeholders why they needed to adopt universal screening.

The district decided to move forward with a strengths-based approach and determined that the THESE was the strongest evaluation, providing a complete universal filter management and deployment solution. What continued to move the program forward was the ability to pilot it with an elementary school counselor and administrator.

After the pilot, Price received school and counselor feedback on how it was used at the building level, and helped drive tier two interventions for students (practices) and inform professional learning communities (systems) for students. teachers. Once they knew it could be successful in the current system, they decided to adopt the practice for all schools, kindergarten through eighth grade, with the goal of having effective universal programming and supports to minimize the number of students who need support at advanced levels. levels.

Roswell ISD illustrates that there are nuances in how to address the holistic well-being of students. Moving in the direction of adopting a universal screener may require some thought and refinement, but it is an effective way to capture those students who need our support most.