Project Description Narrative:
Each day dozens of potentially traumatic law enforcement, fire and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) events occur in the City of Milwaukee that have the potential to affect Milwaukee Public School (MPS) students. In a typical large urban school district, trauma needs are addressed through mental health support staff including psychologists, social workers, and counselors. In fact, some have acknowledged that our nation’s schools are already the de facto provider of mental health services to our youth (Connors et al., 2016). In general though, children living in underprivileged neighborhoods or who are from marginalized communities have less access to mental health care than their middle class counterparts (Juszczak, Melinkovich & Kaplan, 2003). Proactive support and care will help decrease this disparity.
Even with the additional support of robust cross-agency collaboration, the amount of potentially traumatic incidents that are known to school support staff are considered to be a fraction of those actually experienced by the students and their families. This is primarily due to a lack of procedural communication with first response agencies and the absence of a consistent means of comparing and communicating incident data. This problem is compounded by events that occur outside of the school year, when the connections between support staff and students are naturally fractured.
Current methods for referral involve a mechanism of personal phone calls and rely on the referring party, parent/guardian and provider’s impression and discretion. Using currently available technology to create an automated system promises to be more efficient and effective. However, the number of incidents that intersect with MPS students is unknown, inhibiting the ability to right-size a response system at the district level.
This project seeks to address the fundamental issue that potentially traumatic events originating in the community are underreported to school personnel, and hence, under-addressed. This results in a significant gap between student trauma needs and the system with the capacity to provide support.
The population impacted by this project are children living in the city of Milwaukee and who attend Milwaukee Public Schools.
New knowledge from this project will be shared in the following way to inform policy and practice. First, information will be shared internally with the community partners to inform, engage and facilitate planning for future steps. We intend to present our findings at local, state and regional conferences and work groups focused on education, health and equity.