Federal Activities Addressing Violence in Schools
Programmatic Activities
Coalitions for Prevention Grants
State and local governmental organizations will receive grant funding to promote mental health and prevent violence and substance abuse among youth. The grants will support the development of self-sustaining coalitions between state and local governments, with community service delivery systems, to promote a community wide understanding of youth problem behaviors and approaches to violence prevention. In addition the funding will assist communities in assessing youth behavioral problems, identifying risk and protective factors for such problems, and evaluating the availability of and gaps in needed services. Approximately 25 applicants will be funded $150,000 to $350,000 annually over a 2 to 3-year period.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
(301) 443-7713
Medwards@samhsa.gov
Doris Steward
(301) 443-3347
Dsteward@samhsa.gov
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/cmhs/
Continuing the Development of Collaborative Partnerships Between Domestic Violence Advocates and Mental Health Providers in Order to Provide Comprehensive Services for Domestic Violence Survivors and their Children
The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) will continue the work initiated in 1999 on developing collaborative partnerships between domestic violence advocates and mental health providers. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide comprehensive services for domestic violence survivors and their children. Consultation meetings and a consensus conference will be conducted with state mental health authorities, mental health providers, domestic violence advocates and survivors to develop, promote, and sustain mental health and domestic violence partnerships.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Contact:COPS in Schools
Many communities are discovering that trained, sworn law enforcement officers assigned to schools make a difference. The presence of these officers provides schools with on-site security and a direct link to local law enforcement agencies. To help hire community policing officers to work in schools, the COPS in Schools initiative provides an incentive for law enforcement agencies to build working relationships with schools to use community policing efforts to combat school violence. The COPS in Schools initiative reduces the local match requirement for law enforcement agencies seeking to hire additional officers in and around schools. Grants are awarded to provide for a designated portion of salary and benefits for each new officer over a three-year period.
Lead/Funder: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Contact:(202) 633-1625
Calvin.Hodnett@usdoj.gov
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=54
COPS in Schools: Keeping Our Kids Safe A Community Policing Model for SRO Training
The COPS Office, in collaboration with Circle Solutions Inc. and the National School Safety Center has developed a community policing model for school resource officer (SRO) programs. This model delineates three primary responsibilities of a SRO: Problem Solver and Liaison to Community Resources; Educator; and Safety Specialist and Law Enforcer. The unique demands placed on SRO's require that we provide them with appropriate tools to promote school safety. The COPS Office, Circle Solutions Inc. and the National School Safety Center are pioneering the effort to provide those tools by developing a comprehensive training for SRO's and school administrators based on the COPS in Schools model. To assist in the design, development, and delivery of this training, they have partnered with the Yale Child Study Center, National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, Center for the Prevention of School Violence, National Crime Prevention Council, Street Law Incorporated, National Association of School Resource Officers, National Institute for School and Workplace Safety, National Alliance for Safe Schools, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. This training is flexible and allows grantees to tailor their program to meet their unique local school and community needs.
All agencies awarded under the COPS in Schools program must attend this training as a condition of their grant funding.
Lead/Funder: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Contact:(202) 633-1625
Calvin.Hodnett@usdoj.gov
http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=54
Drug-Free Communities Program
The Drug-Free Communities Program is designed to strengthen community-based coalition efforts to reduce youth substance abuse. Coalitions include community representation from the following areas: youth, parents, business, media, schools, youth-serving organizations, law enforcement, civic, volunteers, fraternal groups, health care professionals, state, local, or tribal government agencies with expertise in the field of substance abuse. Other organizations are included which are involved in substance abuse reduction as well. In FY 2000, after a competitive review process, ONDCP and OJJDP selected 94 grantees to receive awards up to $100,000 for a 1-year period. Additional one-year awards were made to 122 communities from FY 1999 and 91 communities from FY 1998. The program enables these coalitions to enhance collaboration and coordination in an effort to prevent illegal drug, alcohol, and tobacco use. In fiscal year 2001, $40 million will be available for grants. Approximately 150 new grants may be awarded in FY 2001.
Lead/Funder: Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
Collaborators: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP), Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP)
Contacts for other program information:
(202) 395-7253
gregory_l._dixon@ondcp.eop.gov
Sigrid Melus
(202) 395-5016
sigrid_e._melus@ondcp.eop.gov
Enforcing Zero Tolerance for Guns and Other Weapons in Schools
In October 1994, President Clinton signed into law the Gun-Free Schools Act, and issued a Presidential Directive later that month to enforce "zero tolerance" for guns in schools - if a student brings a gun to school, that student will be expelled for a year. The Department of Education annually collects and reports data from states on their implementation of the Gun-Free Schools Act. For the school year 1997-1998, states reported expelling more than 3,900 students for bringing weapons to school.
Lead/Funder: Department of Education (ED)
Contact:Families and Schools Together (FAST) in Privileged Communities
Existing prevention literature documents numerous models of positive youth development and violence prevention. However, many of these approaches have not been generated or tested in privileged communities where a broad array of factors play a significant role in youth development and mental health. To enhance mental health and reduce the risk of violence among middle school children from privileged communities, CMHS will award a professional services contract to adapt, implement, and assess the impact of the research-based FAST (Families and Schools Together) program in two communities for a period of one year. The contractor will implement the outreach, youth group, and multi-family group strategy for building relationships on multiple levels of the middle school youths' social ecology and assess the stress, social behavior and issues that children from upper-income communities experience. In addition, the contractor will evaluate two types of social capital- bonding and bridging and will develop a report that includes a review of pertinent literature on social capital and youth from targeted communities, qualitative evaluative materials on FAST, as well as process notes on the implementation and adaptation of the program.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Contact:Grassroots Youth Crime Intervention
Through a grant to the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, Washington, DC, this innovative program seeks to keep youth residing in public housing away from gang, drug, and crime-related activities. The training takes place at the grassroots level. Youth are exposed to strategies and opportunities that prevent them from engaging in violent and illegal drug activities. More information is available at www.spartasolutions.net.
Lead/Funder: Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Public and Indian Housing, Office of Public and Assisted Housing Delivery, Community Safety and Conservation Division
Contact:Guided Grieving for Inner City Children: An Intervention to Prevent Violence
The Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) is concerned about the impact that violence has on children who lose their parents or care givers and for those children who may be exposed on a daily basis to high levels of community and/or familial violence. The developmental impact on these children is serious in that it places them at an increased risk for destructive and self-destructive behaviors as well as emotional disturbances such as depression. Unfortunately, research has shown that many inner-city children struggle with violence on a daily basis. To address this issue of loss, a social service agency will implement and evaluate an innovative school-based model designed to help inner city children work through unresolved grief.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Contact:National Youth Violence Prevention Training
Through a grant to the SPARTA Consulting Corporation of Bethesda, Maryland, workshops, led by experts in the field of youth violence prevention, offer skill-building exercises and showcase model programs for public housing communities. Focus groups discuss specific issues such as residents' concerns about violence, management techniques for preventing violence, and the role of law enforcement in a community-based violence prevention program. SPARTA has developed a 500-page curriculum that provides prevention, intervention, and treatment solutions to youth violence that focus on protective and risk factors for various age groups.
Lead/Funder: Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Public and Indian Housing, Office of Public and Assisted Housing Delivery, Community Safety and Conservation Division
Contact:Public Housing Graduates Program
Through a grant to the Center for Community Change, Washington, DC, this program provides a new approach to providing services to low-income teens. The program is being modeled in six public housing neighborhoods in Washington, DC, and offers a comprehensive needs assessment and support plan with nine components including Youth Court, Youth Leadership/Toastmaster Training, Healthy Todays and Tomorrows (focuses on conflict management), and Sister-to-Sister and Brother-to-Brother (focuses on problem-solving).
Lead/Funder: Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Public and Indian Housing, Office of Public and Assisted Housing Delivery, Community Safety and Conservation Division
Contact:Resilience and Violence Prevention for Asian American and Pacific Islander Youth
In September 1999, the Center for Mental Health Services awarded a 12-month contract to the Georgetown University Child Development Center to develop a violence prevention and resiliency model for Asian American and Pacific Islander youth that builds upon current mainstream models where appropriate, incorporates appropriate ethnic and cultural variables, and synthesizes components of promising practices in violence prevention for the extremely heterogeneous Asian American and Pacific Islander populations.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Contact:Safe and Drug-Free Schools National Programs
This program is comprised of a number of projects, including (a) funding to support the National Resource Center for Safe Schools which offers training and technical assistance to enable schools and communities to create safe school environments; (b) continuation awards for grants to improve the effectiveness of prevention programming for youth; (c) a grant to support the Partnerships for Preventing Violence Satellite Training Telecasts, a six-part series taking a cross-disciplinary approach to the complex problem of violence in our schools and communities; (d) a grant to support the National Center for Conflict Resolution Education (NCCRE), providing training and technical assistance nationwide to advance the development of conflict resolution education programs in schools, juvenile justice settings and youth service organizations and community partnership programs; and (e) a recognition program that identifies and honors schools that have implemented programs of demonstrated effectiveness in reducing student drug use, reducing violent behavior, and creating safe and orderly environments for learning.
Lead/Funder: Department of Education (ED)
Collaborators: Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)
Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act State and Local Grants
This program will award $439 million in formula grants to states in Fiscal Year 2000. Funds are used to support drug and violence prevention programs in virtually every school district in the nation.
Lead/Funder: Department of Education (ED)
Contact:Safe Schools/Healthy Students (SS/HS) Initiative
SS/HS is a collaborative effort of the Federal Departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor. Grants of $1 million to $3 million have been awarded to 77 local education authorities who have formal partnerships with local mental health and law enforcement agencies. These partnerships have developed and will implement comprehensive plans to promote healthy development, foster resilience in the face of adversity, and prevent violence. The plans consist of six main areas: (1) school safety; (2) alcohol and other drugs and violence prevention and early intervention programs; (3) school and community mental health prevention and treatment services; (4) early childhood psychosocial and emotional development programs; (5) educational reform; (6) safe school policies; and (7) school-to-work/employment programs. Grant awards totaled $145 million.
Lead/Funder: Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program (SDFS), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Contact:(202) 708-4674
karen_dorsey@ed.gov
Kellie Dressler
(202) 514-4817
dresslek@ojp.usdoj.gov
(301) 443-0554
Amathews@samhsa.gov
Richard Morris
(202) 693-3603
morris.richard@dol.gov
School and Community Action Grant Program
The School and Community Action Grant Program (SAG), sponsored by the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) and supported in 1999 by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), was designed to build community consensus and collaboration, as well as pilot an evidence-based program to promote healthy childhood development and prevent youth violence. In FY 2000 the program was renamed-Cooperative Agreements for Comprehensive Community Actions to Promote Youth Violence Prevention, Suicide Prevention and Resilience Enhancement-to reduce confusion regarding organization eligibility. Recipients are expected to implement an evidence-based, youth violence/suicide prevention program that will be responsive to community needs. The program requires that grantees undertake community based consensus and collaboration building with the goal of establishing a foundation which can be sustained. The CMHS anticipates awarding 30-40 new cooperative agreements to school or community organizations for up to $150,000 annually for two years.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Collaborators: Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)
(301) 443-7713
Medwards@samhsa.gov
Malcolm Gordon
(301) 443-2959
Mgordon@samhsa.gov
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/cmhs/
School-Based Partnerships - School-Related Crime Prevention and Safety Initiative
The School-Based Partnerships grant program provides policing agencies with a unique opportunity to work with schools and community-based organizations to address persistent school-related crime problems. Three hundred seventy-five grants were awarded in FY 98 and FY 99 for law enforcement agencies and schools to focus on a primary school-related crime or disorder problem occurring in or around an elementary or secondary school. Grant recipients use problem-solving methods to understand the causes of the problem; develop specific tailored responses to that problem; and assess the impact of those responses.
Lead/Funder: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS)
Contact:School Violence and Mental Health Award
The School Violence and Mental Health Award is designed to recognize outstanding media projects that advance the goals of reducing school violence, promoting nonviolent means, and presenting accurate and sympathetic depictions of mental health issues. The award will provide recognition to those in the media (producers, directors, writers, and actors) who present stories and images addressing violence prevention and mental health. The audience for the award includes the entertainment industry, violence prevention and mental health professionals, and the general public.
Lead/Funder: Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
Collaborators: Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT)
(301) 443-9848
Erondell@samhsa.gov
Iris Hyman
(301) 443-9824
Ihyman@samhsa.gov
http://mentalhealth.samhsa.gov/cmhs/
Starting Early Starting Smart (SESS)
Starting Early Starting Smart is funded through an innovative public/private partnership between SAMHSA and the Casey Family Program. It is an early childhood program designed as a child-centered, family-focused, and community-based initiative delivering integrated behavioral health services to young children (birth to 7 years of age) and their families. Grantees are located in diverse early childhood settings: Head Start, primary care clinics and preschool/child care settings. School systems are involved through affiliations such as Head Start programs located in the public schools. The SESS projects work with multiple ethnic groups including African Americans, Hispanic populations, Caucasians, American Indians and Asian populations. Grantees provide an integrated system of case management, pediatric primary care, home visitation, dyadic therapy, parent education, support groups, language development, reading readiness, domestic violence treatment and education, in-home support, mental health services, substance abuse prevention and treatment, and services to meet special needs (e.g., speech therapy, physical therapy). As a result of these interventions, it is expected that children's and families' access to and utilization of behavioral health services will increase, children's development will be enhanced, and family functioning will improve.
At the 6-month point in the study, observational data on parent/child interaction show healthier behaviors in the intervention group that comparison groups, in standardized feeding, diapering, and play interactions, with differences reaching the level of scientific significance. When data collection ends, detailed analyses of the findings will be made available. Because of promising early findings Casey Family Programs and SAMHSA will be extending the early study for 22 additional months, at eight of the original sites. Additionally, SAMHSA is supporting a small new effort to see if the early results are replicable in other services systems for families with young children.
Lead/Funder: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration (SAMHSA)
Collaborators: Administration on Children and Families (ACF),
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Department of Education
(ED)
The 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program
The Department of Education awards grants to rural and inner-city public schools to enable them to plan, implement, or expand projects that benefit the educational, health, social services, cultural and recreational needs of the community. The FY 1999 budget included a $200 million expansion that provides safe and educational after school opportunities for up to 500,000 children. This increase will give more school-age children in rural and urban communities across the country positive learning opportunities and keep more kids off the streets in the after school hours when most violent juvenile crime occurs.
Lead/Funder: Department of Education (ED)
Contact:Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
The Campaign targets youth ages 9-18, especially the vulnerable middle-school adolescents (ages 11-13), their parents, and the adults who influence the choices young people make. To get the word out across every economic and cultural boundary, the Campaign uses a mix of modern communications techniques, from advertising and public relations to interactive media, and all possible venues, from television programs to after-school activities, to educate and empower young people to reject illicit drugs. The Campaign also teams up with civic and non-profit organizations, faith-based groups, and private corporations to engage people in prevention efforts at school, at work, and at play. Through partnership with various organizations, the campaign seeks to provide information on protective and risk factors, and promote research-based information that contributes to the prevention of substance abuse, violence, and other unhealthy life choices.
Lead/Funder: Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)
Collaborators: National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), Center
for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration (SAMHSA), Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program (SDFS)
Youth Offender Demonstration Project
The U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration is funding 14 grantee organizations with the Department of Justice's participation to help place youth offenders and gang members between the ages of 14 and 24 either into long-term employment at wage levels that will prevent future dependency and/or break the cycle of crime and juvenile delinquency that contributes to recidivism and non-productive activities. The grants are designed to address the education, training, employment, and social services needs of youth who are involved in gangs, were at one time involved in gangs, were incarcerated or at-risk of becoming formally involved in the juvenile justice system, or at-risk of becoming involved in gangs. The projects also provide services to in-school youth who are demonstrating behavior that indicates they may be at risk of dropping out of school. There are three categories of programs: (a) five model neighborhood projects consisting of comprehensive approaches aimed at both preventing juvenile crime and serving youth offenders, (b) three model education and training programs in youth correctional facilities, and (c) six smaller youth offender projects in medium-sized cities. This demonstration project is designed to build effective linkages between diverse organizations in the community in order to strengthen their ability to meet the needs of youth offenders or potential youth offenders.
Lead/Funder: Employment and Training Administration (ETA), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
Contact:(202) 693-3678
dbalduchhi@doleta.gov
Thomas Murphy
(202) 353-8734
murphyt@ojp.usdoj.gov
www.doleta.gov