Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA)

The Youth Mental Health First Aid workshop is designed to teach parents, family members, caregivers, teachers, school staff, peers, neighbors, health and human services workers, and other caring citizens how to help an adolescent (age 12-18) who is experiencing a mental health or addictions challenge or is in crisis. Youth Mental Health First Aid is primarily designed for adults who regularly interact with young people. The course introduces common mental health challenges for youth, reviews typical adolescent development, and teaches a 5-step action plan for how to help young people in both crisis and non-crisis situations. Topics covered include anxiety, depression, substance use, disorders in which psychosis may occur, disruptive behavior disorders (including AD/HD), and eating disorders. YMHFA training is an evidence-based practice which has been demonstrated to reduce stigma and provides laypeople that have no mental health background with the tools to help people in their communities. YMHFA courses have been attended by police officers, teachers, nurses, Human Resources administrators, faith leaders and other community members.

• Length: 8 hours for community based, 6 hours for school based
• Capacity: 25-30 per class
• Audience: Adults working with 12-18 year-olds
• Availability: Statewide

• Youth Mental Health First Aid Contact:
  • Kathleen Oberlin
  • oberlink2@gmail.com
  • (330) 697-3899

Threat Assessment Orientation: Checklist for K-12 Schools

The Threat Assessment Orientation training is a basic introductory overview of threat assessment that condenses the best practice strategies into simple steps for school personnel that are easy to understand rather than a complete guide for establishing threat assessment planning, procedures, and policies. Following six nationally recognized resources, this 2-hour training covers the following content:

• Definition, types and key principles of threat assessment
• School safety and a positive school climate
• Role of a threat assessment team
• Developing a threat assessment process
• Review of the Threat Assessment Checklist for K-12 Schools

• Length: 2 hours
• Capacity: up to 30 participants
• Audience: School support staff, teachers, administrators, parents, volunteers
• Availability: Statewide

Red Flags: A Framework and Tool Kit for Mental Health Education

Built on 20 years of experience in K-12 schools as an evidenced-based program, Red Flags engages the entire school community: faculty and staff, students, and parents in a process that increases mental health literacy, promotes sound mental health habits, and assures prompt and effective intervention at the onset of a developing mental health concern. Utilizing local ESC's, Red Flags has two course offerings: a workshop designed for administrators, and a separate training for those personnel who would be charged with the actual implementation of Red Flags in their school. Crafted for the different responsibilities of administrators or implementers, both workshops have the same basic objectives:

Participants will:

1. Recognize the fundamental importance of engaging the entire school community in fostering sound mental health and promoting early intervention.
2. Become acquainted with the variety of materials available through Red Flags which allow for flexibility based on individual school needs and resources.
3. Gain confidence in the implementation process for a comprehensive and effective mental health plan for their school.

1. Workshop for Administrators; Principles for Effective Mental Health Programming

   • Length: 2 hours
   • Capacity: 5 teams minimum, 10 teams maximum (30 maximum people)
   • Audience: ESCs host administrators from multiple schools. Teams may include: superintendent, principals, assistant principals, curriculum directors, pupil services, school board member, PTA/PTO Officer.

2. Red Flags Implementer Workshop

   • Length: 4 hours
   • Capacity: Up to 25 per class
   • Audience: Utilizes ESCs to host teams from multiple schools, Red Flag’s implementers include counselors, school psychologists, health teachers, school nurse, pupil services coordinator.

• Red Flags National Contact:
  • Devi Gursahaney
  • Executive Director
  • request training
  • (330) 860-7123

Red Flags Workshop for School Staff: A Cooperative Approach to Mental Health

This two hour onsite workshop for teachers, support staff, and school volunteers explains the importance of the entire school community to foster sound mental health in students. Simple daily techniques can make a huge difference in students’ academic success. Additionally, clearly defined roles for all those who interact with the student body can simplify speedy and effective intervention for individual students with developing mental health concerns. This workshop is designed for schools planning to implement Red Flags and assumes some personnel have previously attend the Implementer Training.

Participants will:

1. Share some techniques to validate a student’s sense of self, promote resilience, build on strengths, and encourage positive social interaction.
2. Review the effectiveness of the school’s protocol for accessing help for at risk students, identifying strengths and challenges.
3. Identify at least one focus area for improvement over the following year.

Workshop for Administrators; Principles for Effective Mental Health Programming

• Length: 2 hours
• Capacity: Ideally 25-30. Although larger groups can be accommodated. Morning and afternoon sessions can be given
• Audience: School staff such as teachers, support staff, school volunteers

QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer)

The QPR (Question, Persuade, Refer) reduces suicidal behaviors and saves lives by providing innovative, practical and proven suicide prevention training. We believe that quality education empowers all people, regardless of their background, to make a positive difference in the life of someone they know. QPR is an emergency response to someone in crisis. QPR is the most widely taught training in the world. You will learn to recognize warning signs of suicide; know how to offer hope; know how to get help and save a life. QPR Gatekeeper Training for Suicide Prevention is listed in the National Registry of Evidenced-based Practices and Policies (NREPP).

• Length: 90 minutes.
• Capacity: 25-30 per class
• Audience: Gatekeepers: parents, school staff, first responders, nurses, doctors, case workers
• Availability: Statewide

LifeAct: Evidenced-based, Peer Focused Teen Suicide Prevention Education

LifeAct has been serving Ohio’s schools with mental health awareness and suicide prevention for over 25 years. LifeAct instructors go into high school and middle school classrooms to teach students face-to-face how to recognize the warning signs of depression and suicide, and connect students who come forward during the program for help with the proper professionals. LifeAct annually serves more than 30,000 students, and this year alone more than 2,800 will come forward for help for themselves or for a friend. LifeAct offers two programs, with age-appropriate content for grades 6-8 and for grades 9-12. Both are approximately 90 minutes, designed to fit in two class periods, and include PowerPoint, videos, group activities, a skit, and interactive Q & A. The middle school program focuses on stress, including recognizing healthy and unhealthy responses to stress. The high school program focuses on the warning signs of depression, and how to respond. Both programs include conversation about suicide, which is necessary given its prevalence. Suicide is the second leading cause of death, after accidents, for ages 10-35. Research has shown that talking about suicide does not increase the risk; in fact, it makes people safer.

• Length: 90 minutes, delivered in 2 class periods (can accommodate block scheduling or back-to-back school days)
• Capacity: Up to 35 students, classroom teacher must be present during program delivery.
• Audience: High school students grades 9-12, middle school students grades 6-8
• Availability: Statewide

Promote Care & Prevent Harm Courses

Our non-profit organization is rooted in a deep philosophy about how to actualize behavioral and belief changes in people and within our culture. The philosophy is simple – rather than waiting to react to the bad, we should proactively promote, recognize, and reinforce the good before harm occurs. In the past decade, we have come to understand the moral roots of youth and adult thinking. Simply put, some people prefer to promote care while others prefer to prevent harm. These psychological mindsets lead to different goals, strategies, and school climates. We create awareness about these mindsets and leverage the diverse, psychological strengths of individuals to create collaborative, team-based initiatives within the school.

In the aftermath of the April 16th, 2007 Virginia Tech campus shooting, we initiated a grassroots movement to actively care. In 2009, we expanded to research-based, programmatic efforts to improve school climate by cultivating a caring culture of non-violence to achieve safe schools. In 2012, we created a youth-led program to help Chardon High School students recover after their school shooting. After a decade of research at Virginia Tech, we developed research-based programs for elementary, middle, and high schools. In 2014, we formed Promote Care & Prevent Harm, a research and development non-profit organization, to scale these research-based programs across K-12 schools and college campuses. We hope to bring our youth programs and adult training courses to your schools and community!

• Promote Care & Prevent Harm Programs Contact:
  • Shane McCarty
  • Executive Director & Research Scientist CorFoundation
  • shane@promotecarepreventharm.org
  • (571) 294-4148
  • (202) 930-2672

Actions encourage students to perform and reinforce kindness as recipients and bystanders of caring actions. The approach uses “acting into thinking” (compared to “thinking into acting”) meaning actions and experiences facilitate education and awareness. This approach focuses on decreasing negative behaviors, increasing positive behaviors and even changing one's habits to better care for others. The Actions framework has two programs:

To engage in caring actions, a student needs to feel empowered, which includes three psychological components: self-efficacy/self-confidence, knowledge, and motivation. Students experience collective empowerment when they join a movement, creating a sense of collective unity and greater purpose to promote care and prevent harm in their schools. The school-wide presentation focuses on the diversity of caring, from the little daily actions to large-scale campaigns and initiatives. Presenters share how students recovered after the Virginia Tech shooting, initiated a movement of active caring, and then empowered others to promote care and prevent harm in their schools. Students will learn to be positive deviants who counter negative cultural norms by upstanding as part of a collective effort to transform their school culture.

Cyberbullying, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and social isolation are increasingly prevalent for youth. This app-based program encourages youth to look for the “good” happening in their school and then recognize their peers for caring actions using a trackable wristband. In a world of negative, gossip, and harmful communities, this mobile app counters these problems by focusing and lifting up the silent, previously unrecognized moments of goodness. The next version of the app will encourage youth to move beyond upstanding by performing daily kindness to benefit the school climate and culture. Students will use a goal - setting approach to achieve kindness goals, track their own and peers’ progress, and see the benefits of kindness.

• Length: 45-90 minutes, student assembly delivered in 1 or 2 class periods (can accommodate scheduling)
• Capacity: School-wide for up to 2,500 students with adults present
• Audience: High school students, grades 9-12 (middle school version available Fall 2020)
• Availability: Statewide

Advising Youth-Led Change for School Clubs

After-school programming benefits the development of participating youth. However, only select after-school clubs focus on youth-led change to improve the school climate. Some after-school clubs use youth-led programming to focus on preventing problems, including bullying, violence, and substance use. Some clubs focus on promoting aspirations, such as diversity and inclusion, mentoring, and spreading kindness. Although clubs in the same school may focus on different school climate goals, they both consist of a group of students who are motivated to address a common problem (e.g., bullying, mental health stigma, exclusion). To create youth-led change, the club should transform from a group of people with a shared goal to a team of empowered youth who can develop, implement and evaluate their own youth-led campaigns and initiatives.

This training includes three components:

1. a team diagnostic/ assessment of the youth team’s functioning to determine opportunities for enhancing team cohesion, team effectiveness, and team well-being,
2. a facilitated dialogue for club advisors to share their best practices with others,
3. an innovative team functions model (e.g., for recruitment, feedback, problem solving) to determine whether adults or youth are best positioned to take responsibility for specific team functions.

A team diagnostic tool is used by club advisors to assess the state of the team, including the strengths and improvement areas for 15 team functional domains: The team diagnostic and training provide club advisors with an assessment of the team and included best practices for achieving better team functioning to address school climate aims.

• Length: 4 hours, delivered to single school, school district or cross districts via an ESC
• Capacity: 15 - 40 per class
• Audience: School staff/club advisors working with high school students, grades 9-12 (middle school version available Fall 2020)
• Availability: Statewide

Building Caring Solutions: A Youth-Led Change Curriculum

Solutions guides teams of students through a five-step, problem-solving process focused on the prevention of school problems (e.g., substance use, bullying, social isolation) and promotion of aspirations (e.g., school spirit, wellness). Throughout the curriculum, team members work collaboratively to assess, build capacity, plan, implement and evaluate their own solutions. The curriculum benefits student participants (e.g., critical thinking, leadership), the youth-led team (e.g., team cohesion), and the school climate (e.g., reduced problems, increased aspirations).

Solutions supports students in developing their own evidence-informed strategies (from SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention).For example, students in central Ohio recognized the need for alternatives for peers in hopes to decrease substance misuse. As a result, students identified the need to aid the freshmen transition process by increasing freshmen participation in after-school activities/clubs. Students organized and implemented a school- wide, after-school activities fair to encourage students of all grades to join registered student organizations and sport teams. Prior implementation of the approach has resulted in specific tracks of solutions, from mental health to safety and even recovery. A trained facilitator delivers the program and a club advisor/ prevention specialist (with a college student mentor) sustains it.

Caring Solutions for Mental Health is a knowledge and skills-based course providing youth with an understanding of risk and protective factors related to mental health. Then, students can develop a team-based approach to promote mental wellness and prevent mental health crises.

Caring Solutions for Safety helps students develop their own solutions to keep their peers safe at school. When students develop and deliver evidence-informed, promotive and preventive safety solutions, students perceive more safety and are objectively safer.

Caring Solutions for Recovery create trauma-informed prosocial leadership and a process for student leaders to build their own promotive and preventive campaigns during recovery.

• Length: 6 hours (for one-day event) or 4 workshops of 90-minutes (for block scheduled classes)
• Capacity: 10-16 students per trainer
• Audience: School District Administration, School Building Leaders, Educators, Counselors, Social Workers, Counselors, Teachers, and Law Enforcement
• Availability: Statewide

The School Safety Strategy Continuum: Creating a Safe Culture

New safety programs are implemented daily with mixed success. Some problems are solved, while others linger. A safe school requires more than armed guards, body armor, bullet-proof backpacks, and surveillance cameras. And yet, a $3 billion industry has emerged to “target harden” schools by protecting people from harm and mitigating severely harmful incidents. School administrators and school safety teams often select safety strategies to address a specific safety problem (e.g., active shooter drill) at the expense of a different safety problem (e.g., ineffective school disciplinary policies, which lead to more unsafe behavior). So, how does a school create a safety culture? An assessment and training on the School Safety Strategy Continuum. The training includes three components: 1) a school assessment to assess the safety climate, 2) an overview of the School Safety Strategy Continuum and the associated evidence-based, safety-related programs and practices, and 3) a mindset self-assessment on promotive and preventive thinking to determine how participants think about safety. The School Safety Strategy Continuum categorizes evidence-based safety strategies into one of eight domains, from most proactive to reactive:

• Promote: rewarding desired behaviors and building skills
• Prevent: stopping a harmful action/event from occurring
• Protect: securing for a probable harmful action/event (threat or hazard)
• Mitigate: reducing harmful impact (severity)
• Respond: intervening to stop a harmful action
• Discipline: teaching/ applying consequences to address a student’s harmful action
• Restore: repairing relationships and improving offender’s functioning
• Recover: renew the environments, mental health and well-being of all involved The assessments and training provide individuals (e.g., school administrators, educators, SROs) and school teams (e.g., school safety, school crisis, threat assessment) with the strategies to improve their safety climate in each of the eight domains to create a safety culture.

• Length: 4 hours, delivered to single school, school district or cross districts via an ESC
• Capacity: 15 - 40 per class
• Audience: School District Administration, School Building Leaders, Educators, Counselors, Social Workers, Counselors, Teachers, and Law Enforcement
• Availability: Statewide

EnvisionEdPlus Courses

EnvisionEdPlus has worked with school and youth-serving agencies across the Midwest and as far away as California and Maryland. Most of our team members are based in Ohio and Michigan. We have well- established relationships across the K-12 continuum, including private schools, community schools, stand- alone STEM designated schools, traditional public-school districts, regional education service organizations and youth serving not-for-profit organizations. Our team has provided professional services for 37 different organizations in two states, including 18 Ohio counties. With a strong reputation for innovation, we at EnvisionEdPlus attribute our success to a comprehensive understanding of the education and youth development landscape, careful alignment of priorities among partners, and attention to the details that make significant impacts in schools, districts, communities and the children they serve. EnvisionEdPlus is well-positioned to provide high quality research informed professional development to schools across the State of Ohio.

• Envision Ed Plus Courses Contact:
  • Craig Lautenschleger
  • EnvisionEdPlus, LLC
  • craig@envisionedplus.com
  • (614) 893-7341