The Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center School Mental Health Team will be presenting at the first Virtual AWSP & WASA Conference 2021!
Summer Conference 2021 will feature John Hattie, Peter DeWitt, DJ Batiste, Floyd Cobb, John Krownapple and more. You will be able to choose your own learning adventure this June!
This session will provide school and district leaders information they need to know about a step-by-step process to build a trauma-informed single system of delivery in which education and mental health systems are integrated across tiers of support with multi-disciplinary teams using data to implement one continuum of evidence-based behavior/mental health practices. The Interconnected System Framework (ISF) is a structure and process for creating a comprehensive system of social, emotional, and behavioral supports and moving school mental health from a co-located approach to an integrated approach. Key messages of ISF will be shared which include a single system of delivery, mental health wellness as a protective factor, measuring impact as opposed to access, and using the MTSS framework to guide an integrated approach. This session will also provide information on selecting and implementing evidence-based school mental health interventions, working with community-based organizations, and universal screening. We will also provide an overview of existing resources for accessing additional training and technical assistance support for MTSS in Washington.
Schools have increasingly invested in MTSS to address the academic and social-emotional-behavioral (SEB) needs of all students. This session will focus on wellness practices and developing a habit of wellness for educational leaders. We will also discuss how school leaders can organize, align and allocate resources to create a culture of health and wellness within an MTSS Framework by making shifts in strategy to focus on universal prevention to promote wellness for all, collaboration through establishing a system of support for staff, and data use in decision making to identify protective factors and supports.
The University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment, Research and Training (SMART) Center is a national leader in developing and supporting implementation of evidence-based practices in schools including prevention, early intervention and intensive supports. The SMART Center projects are funded by a variety of federal and local sources and frequently partners with districts in Washington to conduct research and provide training and technical assistance. A panel of UW SMART Center faculty including the Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center’s School Mental Health project director will share findings of current federally funded SMH research, answer questions school leaders have about best practices and lessons learned, show how to access existing free school mental health resources and share the multiple opportunities school/district leaders can engage with UW SMART Center and Northwest MHTTC.
Kelcey Schmitz, MSEd, is the School Mental Health Director for the Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC) at the University of Washington School Mental Health, Assessment, Research and Training (SMART) Center. Kelcey has been involved in many Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) efforts providing training, coaching, and evaluation to schools, districts, families and community organizations to support the social, emotional, and behavioral strengths and needs of students within an MTSS framework. She brings extensive experience leading state-wide MTSS efforts. Kelcey has a master’s degree in Special Education from the University of Kansas.
Susan Barrett, MA, serves as a Director for the Center for Social Behavior Supports Center (CSBS) at Old Dominion University and an Implementer Partner with the U.S. National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). She assists with large-scale implementation of PBIS; partners with researchers to evaluate the impact of PBIS on students, school staff, and school communities; and serves on the Association of Positive Behavior Supports Board of Directors. She also co-leads the development of the Interconnected Systems Framework, a mental health and PBIS expansion effort. Susan has been published in the areas of large-scale adoption of PBIS, mental health, cost-benefit analysis, advanced tier system development, and adoption of evidence-based practices in schools.
Jill Locke is SMART Center Co-Director, Associate Professor in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, a licensed child psychologist, and research affiliate at the Seattle Children’s Autism Center. To date, her research has focused on the: 1) presentation of social impairment for youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in inclusive school settings; 2) identification of best practices for youth with ASD; and 3) understanding of successful implementation and sustainment of evidence-based practices (EBPs) for youth with ASD in public school settings. She was the principal investigator of two foundation grants that highlighted the importance of the organizational context in successful EBP implementation for youth with autism. Her experiences have highlighted the importance of collaborating with public schools and the reality of working within the constraints of publicly funded systems, their timeline (e.g. school calendar year), and with their personnel.
Aaron Lyon, Ph.D., is SMART Center Co-Director, Associate Professor in the UW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a licensed clinical child psychologist. Dr. Lyon’s research focuses on increasing the accessibility, efficiency, and effectiveness of community- and school-based interventions for children, adolescents, and families. He is particularly interested in (1) the identification and implementation of low-cost, high-yield practices – such as the use of measurement-based care – to reduce the gap between typical and optimal practice in schools; (2) development of individual- and organization-level implementation strategies to promote adoption and sustainment of evidence-based psychosocial interventions within a multi-tier systems of support (MTSS) framework; and (3) human-centered design (and redesign) of psychosocial and digital technologies to improve their implementability, accessibility, and effectiveness. Dr. Lyon is Principal Investigator on multiple active grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Institute of Education Sciences, as well as additional sponsors.
Eric Bruns is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in the University of Washington School of Medicine. Dr. Bruns’s research focuses on public child-serving systems, and how to maximize their positive effects on youth with behavioral health needs and their families. Toward this end, Dr. Bruns focuses primarily on two areas with high public health significance. The first is intensive care coordination models for youths with serious emotional and behavioral challenges. In this area, Dr. Bruns has led multiple federally-funded (NIMH, SAMHSA, CMS) research and intervention development projects aimed at defining and evaluating impact of intensive care coordination models. The second area is school mental health services. In this area, Dr. Bruns is Associate Director of the UW SMART Center, where he leads the Center’s Technical Assistance Core and directs its Institute for Education Sciences (IES)-funded Post-doctoral Research Training Program. He has served as PI or Co-I on six Institute for Education Sciences (IES)-funded research studies, on topics such as development and efficacy testing of an assessment, engagement, triage, and brief intervention strategy for school clinicians and counselors, intensive Tier 3 intervention-models for high school students with SEBC, and methods for addressing racial disparities in school discipline.
Carol Ann Davis, EdD, has focused her work on developing strategies, services, and school-based models to support children and adolescents with chronic and persistent behavioral challenges in the school setting. She is currently a Professor of Special Education and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the College of Education. While much of her research has focused on validating effective intervention strategies for assessment and intervention in the classroom, more recently, she has focused on developing systems and models to assist with the implementation of these practices in classrooms and schools. This work has led to the use and integration of the implementation science literature to facilitate designing and implementing evidenced-based strategies and models of service delivery in schools. In addition to this line of research, she has an extensive history preparing teachers and school leaders in providing evidenced-based practices in the classroom for students with developmental disabilities, Autism, and emotional behavior disorders.
Elizabeth McCauley, PhD, is Acting Director, Child Psychiatry UW/Seattle Children’s and Professor, UW Psychiatry Department, adjunct in Pediatrics and Psychology. Dr. McCauley’s research has focused on the development, prevention and intervention of depression and behavioral health problems in young people. She has developed and/or tested a number of prevention and intervention strategies in clinical, primary care settings and schools. Dr. McCauley has worked with Seattle Public Schools/Public Health-King County for the last 18 years to provide training and consultation to school-based mental health care providers. As part of that work, she has been PI on series of foundation and federally funded projects, both longitudinal and interventional studies, focused on enhancing mental health services in the schools. She is a founding member of the UW School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center.
Want more information and school mental health resources? Visit the Northwest MHTTC's School Mental Health page and sign up for our monthly newsletter for regular updates about events, trainings, and resources available to the Northwest region.
