S.O.S. - supporting our students - bridges' trauma - bridges' support our students (SOS) initiative will establish school-based mental health services in 5 local schools which include large…

S.O.S. - supporting our students - bridges' trauma - bridges' support our students (SOS) initiative will establish school-based mental health services in 5 local schools which include large hispanic/latino, foreign-born, lgbtq, and other populations at high risk of trauma and resulting emotional and conduct issues. To address these, bridges will collaborate with child health development institute (CHDI) to provide a variety of trauma-informed strategies of identification and treatment, and with a network of child-serving local agencies. The population of focus consists of 3 elementary schools in west haven and a high school and middle school in milford, both located in the greater new haven area of southern connecticut. West haven schools have large minority populations, with nearly a third of students speaking a language other than english at home, and nearly a fifth classified as "english learners" at school. Over a fifth of the west haven population is foreign born. If we accept the PEW institute estimate that one-fourth of foreign-born residents are undocumented, over 5% of west haven is undocumented, as is 2.75% of milford. The milford schools are a little over 20% minority, with fewer low-income students. But demographic shift is occurring in both towns; in 12016-2021 the hispanic population rose by 25% in west haven and 17% in milford. Indicators of trauma in the west haven schools include figures for substantiated child/abuse neglect reports, percentage of teens who considered suicide in the past year, and rate of juvenile arrests that exceed state rates by 70%, 64% and 51% respectively. At substantial risk in milford are lgbtq students (at 12%, substantially higher than the state average). Of high school youth who identify as GAY, lesbian, or bisexual, 46.8% seriously considered attempting suicide in the past 12 months, over triple the rate for heterosexual youth per national data. Our proposed project will hire 4 full time clinicians to provide school-based services in the target schools. CHDI, the state-designated performance improvement center, will supply staff training and support. Bridges' collaborative network will include adam's house, an independent grief education center for children; the milford rape crisis center, integrated refugee and immigrant services, to support undocumented families; the milford and west haven prevention councils, milford-ansonia inter-agency meetings on investigation/management of child abuse cases; the juvenile review board; and monthly truancy review meetings. Training for school staff will include trauma screentime, a CHDI sponsored training on trauma screening in children. Clinicians will be trained in 5 trauma-informed evidence-based practices; the modular approach to therapy for children with anxiety, depression, trauma and conduct problems (MATCH-ADTC) which synthesizes elements from several treatments in one flexible model to better address comorbidity complexity; the cognitive behavioral intervention for trauma in schools (CBITS) group intervention for 5-12TH graders who have experienced trauma; bounceback, a version of CBITS for younger children; trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT), a child/parent treatment for youth; and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), used with children/adolescents with trauma with considerable success. The goals are to increase capacity of the two school systems to provide screening/treatment for youth with traumatic stress, with objectives targeting school personnel trained, students referred to bridges' clinicians, students receiving services, students who complete CBITS/BB courses, and students who complete a course of individual treatment, including appropriate percentages of black/hispanic and lgbtq students; and increase positive outcomes among youth in the two school systems, with objectives targeting students who see a decrease in symptoms per cpss-V measures. Projected numbers served are as follows: year 1 - 100; years 2-5 - 160; for a total of 740.