By: Mary Margaret Salls, Chair of Travis County Children’s Partnership; DeAnn Lechtenberger, Texas Tech University; and Laura Atkins, Director of Children’s Services for Travis County Health and Human Services and Veterans Services, Children’s Division
In 1998, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded a Child and Family Mental Health Services grant to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission for the Travis County Children’s Partnership. The purpose of this grant was to carry on the work begun by Travis County, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This multi-year grant provided an additional $7 million for the implementation of a system of care for children with mental health issues and their families.
When the Travis County Children’s Partnership grant was awarded, the community advisory board consisted of representatives from a number of child-serving agencies in Austin/Travis County including juvenile justice, child protective services, mental health, and education. The education representative was from the Education Service Center (ESC), Region XIII. Region XIII is one of 22 intermediary education entities in Texas that provide a multitude of services to every school district in the state. The ESC, Region XIII serves over 65 local school districts, 7 of which are located in Travis County.
As the Travis County Children’s Partnership Board developed, the board recognized a need to build a staff for planning and providing training and technical assistance. Staff positions were created: one at the state level, using state funds with the Texas Integrated Funding Initiative (the first system of care legislation for the state); and one at the local level, using federal funds, with the Children’s Partnership. Both positions were filled with experienced educators who had worked in systems of care. The positions were housed within the ESC, Region XIII to work with the ESC Board Representative and local school districts to implement a system of care in the public schools.
One of the main challenges facing this team of educators was how to support the larger urban school districts in the Austin area (the federal grant), while simultaneously supporting school districts in other parts of Texas. Initially, the idea was to form a team of families and lead school personnel (principals, special education directors, etc.) that would advocate for the utilization of a system of care in the school environment. The team also served as advocates and cultivated relationships with people who were identified as “champions” for the children and families in Travis County, including principals, special education staff, family members, and behavioral specialists. Identifying these champions relied heavily on the relationships that had been cultivated over the years among the special education staff of the ESC, Region XIII and the local school districts.
Since students spend up to eight hours a day, five days a week in school, it made sense to use schools as hubs for the system of care and to apply a child-centered, family-focused, culturally competent, and community-based approach. The Children’s Partnership learned a few lessons during implementation through schools:
- Families referred into the system of care did not always trust school personnel as partners for their teams due to their previous experiences with local schools
- Care coordinators and parent liaisons hired through the local mental health agency for the Children’s Partnership did not understand the value of having a strong education partner on the child and family wraparound teams
- Schools were hesitant to come on board with this approach because it only served a small number of students on a campus because their need for support was much greater than the 1-7% of the students who might need a wraparound team approach
- Schools needed to expand on the expertise and training capabilities that the ESC, Region XIII team had invested in positive behavioral supports.
Lessons Learned from a Parent Coordinator
“One of my first lessons learned in my school district was that the key to success would be having a prior understanding and awareness of the culture of the school campus and the community. For example, one of my first challenges was a distress issue between the family and the school. My role as a care coordinator was to serve as a link and to help resolve issues between the parent and the school. By mediating, we were able to support a middle school student who was failing all of his classes, had been absent half the semester, and whose mother was so distraught over her son's mental health problems that she had lost any hope for any assistance to her and her family. All communication between parent and school has ceased. The school district in our grant site had developed a job description looking for a care coordinator for system of care that also was a parent of a child with severe mental health needs. Due to my experience as a parent, I was quickly able to establish a relationship with this mother, and due to my new position with the school, eventually I was able to bring the two together. This boy is now passing all his classes, and has had no absences in more than a semester. The mom is no longer helpless—in fact she volunteers at the school.”
Valerie Garza—Parent-Coordinator at Manor Middle School |
We used these “lessons learned” to reshape our vision of how to engage schools in the system of care. Our new vision would encourage a combination of the positive behavioral supports and the system of care models, which would include hiring lead parents to serve as parent-coordinators. Positive behavioral supports are strategies designed to assist schools in creating an environment where positive behavior is the expected norm, clear expectations for behavior are consistent school-wide, and support and training are available to teachers and school personnel, including behavior strategies for use in the classroom and for the common areas of the school. The use of system of care values, with positive behavioral supports helps to insure that those students with the highest needs receive coordinated care using a wraparound approach, which is strength-based and meets the individualized needs of the student and their family.
At the same time, the positive behavioral supports model implemented on a school-wide basis ensures that these same values are applied in a consistent manner that provides a more positive and strength-based environment for all students. The combination of system of care and positive behavioral supports models promotes a more positive work environment for school staff and faculty. Not only will student learning and behavioral challenges be met, but as discipline problems decrease, faculty and staff morale will increase. The hope is that students, families, faculty, and staff will see improvements in school performance, attendance, and overall morale.
In order to implement these models in the school system, we needed funding for trainings and support for families and school personnel. With the funding provided by the Texas Integrated Funding Initiative, Texas hosted several statewide trainings and technical assistance meetings. The meetings were coordinated by the ESC, Region XIII and included families, educators, and agency personnel who developed various training tracks. One track included a Train the Trainers retreat to build wraparound training capacity for communities, where a large number of school districts were represented on teams from over ten communities. The ESC, Region XIII marketed this and other training events to schools in Travis County and other parts of the state. As a result of the ongoing funding and trainings, Texas has piloted the positive behavioral supports and system of care models in 13 Travis County schools, as well as multiple school sites in other parts of Texas. During the past six years, we have worked diligently to educate teachers and school personnel about the benefits of strength-based interactions with children who have serious emotional disorders and/or behavioral issues. The conferences and trainings both in the state of Texas and the National System of Care Community Meetings have contributed to educating school personnel and families about the positive effects of positive behavioral supports and system of care in schools.
Pflugerville Middle School is one of the pilot schools in Travis County using the positive behavioral support and system of care models. After six months of implementation, the principal, Cheryl Koury, can appreciate the value of training teachers and school personnel about positive behavioral supports and systems of care. Her recommendation to new schools and principals implementing the models is to strategize on how to help teachers and school personnel understand the process and benefits of positive behavioral supports without prior training and knowledge. In hiring new staff, Koury looks for teachers that are not only comfortable with new ideas, but people who are nonterritorial, flexible in their thinking, and, most importantly, committed to their students. Keeping students and staff motivated continues to be an ongoing priority for Pflugerville Middle School.
Although evaluation data on the outcomes of introducing positive behavioral supports and a system of care in schools is in the preliminary stages, documentation of schools using positive behavioral supports shows that the model has reduced problem behavior in the classroom and common areas of the school and has increased positive social behavior and positive school climate. Common measures of success for both models have been better attendance, fewer office referrals, less tardiness, fewer due process hearings, and fewer placements in Alternative Education Placement (AEP). For example, Pflugerville Middle School has reduced referrals from over 1,400 in the fall of 2002 to 472 in the fall of 2003. Data also showed that 37 students contributed to over 75% of the 472 referrals in 2003. With this information, teachers and school personnel will continue to be proactive in addressing the behavioral problems in the school and in developing a more targeted plan for those 37 students. The challenge the school continues to face is the expansion of the system of care, community supports, and mental health expertise so that these students and their families receive the wraparound services that they need to succeed and to make Pflugerville Middle School a positive learning environment for everyone.
Now that the ideal model for engaging and improving a school’s ability to support students with serious emotional disorders and/or behavioral issues has been identified and piloted, we need to re-direct currents resources or invest in new resources to expand positive behavioral supports and system of care throughout the district and the state. In the next several months, we hope to share with you our advances in implementing the models in new pilot schools and how communities are continuing to grow and sustain the integration of these two best practices.
