Bringing Into Focus: Developing Productive Community Partnerships to Support Student Mental Health  NCSSLE' s Bringing Into Focus shares carefully selected, high quality resources on timely topics to help educators create safe, supportive learning environments. 

Strong school-community partnerships are essential to ensure that students can receive high quality education in conditions suitable to foster their learning and development. Many states have embraced the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) framework to ensure students can be healthy learners. In promoting the WSCC model, the Centers for Disease Control has recognized strong connections between health and academic achievement. Education, public health and school health sectors have all called for greater alignment, integration and collaboration to improve each child’s cognitive, physical, social and emotional development. Schools and their community partners – health and mental health, economic security, housing, child welfare, court, community policing, disability and other systems – can continuously improve their ability to unify efforts to generate positive outcomes for our youngest generations.   The COVID-19 public health emergency has required unprecedented interdependence between our nation’s K-12 schools and community and public health systems. Community-level surveillance of infection-related metrics (e.g. viral transmission, morbidity/mortality) continues to inform the dynamic balance between the twin imperatives of providing students with learning to prepare them to meet life’s demands and challenges, and individual and collective health and safety. At the same time, our national and state leaders are making tactical and strategic investments in many aspects of health support to ensure healthy K-12 learning, from arranging telehealth and school-based care to address student needs, to partnering with colleges and universities to produce a sufficient and qualified workforce to meet the challenges now and for the foreseeable future. Now is the time to draw on our collective expertise about how to develop, sustain and regenerate community partnerships necessary to meet today’s enormous challenges.

FEATURED RESOURCE

Nine Elements of Effective School Community Partnerships to Address Student Mental Health, Physical Health, and Overall Wellness

Coalition for Community Schools and the National Association of School Psychologists outline nine key elements necessary for creating and sustaining effective partnerships to improve student mental health, physical health, and overall wellness. These elements include:

A leadership team comprised of school and community stakeholders; Assets and needs assessment to address student health and wellness, and a framework for results; A designated person located at the school to lead the coordination of school-community partnerships; Clear expectations and shared accountability for the school and community partners; High-quality health and wellness services that leverage school and community resources; Ongoing comprehensive professional development for all school leaders, staff, and community partners; A detailed plan for long-term sustainability; Regular evaluation of effectiveness through a variety of measures; and Communication plan to share progress and challenges.

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Leading by Convening: A Blueprint for Authentic Engagement Source: Cashman, J., Linehan, P., Purcell, L., Rosser, M., Schultz, S., & Skalski, S.  This blueprint enables partnership strategies that build connections and foster authentic engagement among community partners in service to students’ multi-faceted needs.   Ohio Community Collaboration Model for School Improvement  Source: Ohio Department of Education The implementation guide aims to help maximize and leverage family and community resources for learning, healthy development and academic achievement through heavy reliance on community partnerships

Family-School-Community Partnerships Source: National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments The National Center for Safe and Supportive Learning Environments (NCSSLE) has curated an extensive set of resources to support development of effective community-level collaborations. Collaboration Multiplier   Source: Prevention Institute Collaboration Multiplier is an interactive framework and tool for analyzing collaborative efforts across fields. It is designed to guide an organization to a better understanding of which partners it needs and how to engage them, or to facilitate organizations that already work together in identifying activities to achieve a common goal, identify missing sectors that can contribute to a solution, delineate partner perspectives and contributions, and leverage expertise and resources. Using Collaboration Multiplier can help lay the foundation for shared understanding and common ground across all partners.

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National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments | https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov The contents of the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments' Bringing Into Focus were assembled under a contract from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Supportive Schools to the American Institutes for Research (AIR), Contract Number 91990021A0020. The contents of this product do not necessarily represent the policy or views of the U.S. Department of Education, nor do they imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education. ‌ ‌ ‌