Audience Questions

Does mental health collaborative also include elementary aged students or is it focused on middle and high school students?

The collaborative is aligned with Eastside Pathways vision to support all young people from cradle to career. Our general focus is on elementary, middle and high school students. The age-focus of the SEL strategy that we are in the beginning stages of planning has not been determined.

What focus is given to elementary ages students in regards to mental health and wellbeing? Is their support for parents of students?

At the elementary level, BSD has adopted SEL curriculum that is taught in grades K-5:  Second Step from Committee for Children and RULER—anchor tools that were developed at Yale.  Both are aligned with CASEL competencies:  self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.  Additionally, we have a VIRTUE of the month that is announced, discussed, and referenced throughout the days of the month in a variety of ways.

Any possibility of SEL being incorporated during school days?

SEL is currently incorporated during school days. The collaborative is also examining the role of SEL during out-of-school time.

What are you using to measure SEL?

This is TBD. Members of the collaborative (David Downing, Megan Kennedy, and Judy Buckmaster) traveled to a Strive Convening to learn from other communities how to measure SEL. We will continue to seek examples from other communities during this planning stage.

Does Bellevue Schools have an official SEL framework like CASEL competencies as referenced above?

I would say that SEL is focused on all students (preschool through 12^th grade) and up to this point the CASEL competencies have been the framework (www.casel.org). We are working on aligning everything to the new Washington State SEL Standards and Benchmarks.

Our focus on SEL is inclusive of all these grades in tandem with work being done and evolving across the grades in the schools.

Our alignment of school-based behavioral health providers/services is inclusive of elementary, middle and high schools. The framework we are developing to help guide us in our strategic plan for which agency and which schools services are placed includes specific demographic/economic data and for upper grades where Healthy Youth Survey data is available, that is included as well.

Parent support and voice is important to our collaborative and we have always had parent representation in the collaborative. While it is not our role to provide direct support to parents, we have been identifying the need to have parents engaged in upcoming campaigns. Through our focus on SEL, we are in early phases of talking about how parents will have the right informing/education about this work. Through the work in aligning of behavioral health providers, we are identifying gaps and ways of being more obvious and transparent, so parents are better informed about how to engage with services. As a collective group of behavioral health providers, we all share a commitment to parents being involved whenever possible in a child’s/youth’s treatment through family work.

Is the collaborative also looking at SEL and the reality that there is so much pressure on kids in the schools today? Not only academics but also extracurricular?

Yes, we as a collaborative understand that there is a high level of pressure on children/youth including academic performance, social pressure expectations through avenues such as social media and “resume building” in which children/youth are overextended in extracurricular activities. We recognize that these factors are a major factor impacting and driving issues of stress, anxiety, and depression.

We don’t have a specific campaign planned for this area but rather see it as important information to convey, educate and advocate around to the wider community including schools and parents as part of education around why the need for SEL is so important and a prevention for, or way to mitigate the intensity level, for more advanced mental health challenges.

What work gets done at the policy level to ensure that families and students have access to behavioral health and treatment?

It’s a bit unclear exactly what is meant by “policy level” in relation to treatment. We are in an active phase of developing our strategic plan for where school-based treatment services occur in a collective group of the school district and behavioral health providers. This planning is taking into account access to those groups more at risk of not being reached.

The behavioral health providers do have various contracts and funding sources to respond to needs inclusive of city, county, state and federal funds. Access to treatment is also an area that the behavioral health providers advocate for specifically in the way services are organized within King County. With the current evolution of healthcare integration, the system overall is in a period of dramatic change, and all five of the organizations are key players in having a voice to represent Eastside needs. Advocacy around issues such as reimbursement rates and continued funds for what are called “non-Medicaid tiers” for those that do not qualify for Medicaid is an ongoing action.

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