The National Community of Practice (CoP) on School Behavioral Health is co-led by the IDEA Partnership at NASDSE (funded by Office of Special Education Programs) and the Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland (funded by Health Resources and Services Administration).The focus of this Community is to collaboratively work to create a shared agenda across education, mental health and families.
The National Community now affiliates cross-stakeholder teams that have created 15 state CoPs (HI, IL, MD, MN, MO, MT, NH, NM, NC, OH, PA, SC, SD, UT, WV) modeled on the national exemplar. Community affiliates 22 national organizations and 9 technical assistance centers and coalesces them around the issues they share. Together the states, organizations and TA centers lead 12 issue-based Practice Groups that develop the content and design the interaction for of the National Conference on Advancing School Mental Health.
Working as a Community we hope to:
- Continue to build on the developing connections;
- Use the community to reduce‘siloed behavior’by community members;
- Use the status of the community to bring attention to silos and invite new approaches;
- Promote promising approaches to new collaborations;
- Strengthen an infrastructure for sharing the ongoing work in states;
- Build on our prior experiences in learning with federal agencies and federal investments as partners in theCommunity; and
- Expand collaborative relationships with an array of technical assistance providers that serve the states.
Community Activities
- The Community of Practice (CoP) Meeting is held annually in conjunction with the Annual Conference on Advancing School-Based Mental Health sponsored by the Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland and IDEA Partnership. Community members interact regularly through bi-monthly conference calls, webinars, and practice group activities.
- The 18th Annual Conference on Advancing School-Based Mental Health: The 18th Annual Conference will be held October 3-5, 2013 in Arlington, Virginia. This year conference will feature three plenary sessions, including a keynote by Dr. Mike Dennis, an expert in adolescent substance abuse, a panel of federal leaders/experts who can speak to current initiatives/legislation related to school mental health, and a youth/family panel led by Sandra Spencer (Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health) and LeDerick Horne (youth advocate and motivational speaker).
- Communitypractice groups lead the conference development and proceedings with specialty tracks for each of the national practice groups. They are currently in the process of reviewing proposals and making recommendations for the Conference program.
- Community practice groups and states are also hosting series of webinars on the following issues:
- Serving Military Families in system of Care
- Multi-Tiered Systems of Support as a Bridge for Integrating Mental Health Services in Schools
- Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF)
- Engaging Culturally Diverse Families in School Mental Health
- Assessment and Progress Monitoring in School-Based Mental Health
Shared Work is a social networking virtual workspace developed by the IDEA Partnership and community members to facilitate their collaborative work.
View the public pages of the Behavioral Health CoP
View materials from recent meetings of this CoP and presentations developed for CoP initiatives by members of CoP
2012 CoP meeting- Salt Lake City
PPT by Practice Groups on Issues
- Military Families PG
- PBIS PG-Interconnected Systems Framework
- Systems of Care and Military Families Collaborative Webinar PPT
- Quality and Evidence Webinar PPT