It’s time to connect the dots and intervene early

Students across Texas, and the country, are entering into the 2022-23 school year with apprehension. In the aftermath of COVID lockdowns and the horrific tragedy at Uvalde, student mental wellbeing and school safety is at the forefront of the national consciousness. As state legislatures respond with funding and mandates for school safety focused on emergency response measures, most experts are placing greater emphasis on preventive measures. Specifically, recognizing and addressing both low-level concerns and severe issues at the individual student level which are critical to ensuring students’ physical and emotional safety. However, most experts agree the difficulty in helping students lies in enabling the school and district staff to readily connect the dots earlier to provide the right level of services and to ultimately prevent tragedy. Leveraging software and workflow technology holds promise for addressing this need. Raptor recently spoke to three experts about this topic. They included:

• Amy Grosso, Ph.D., Director of Behavioral Health for Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) and oversees students in crisis or at-risk
• Marisa Randazzo, Ph.D., Executive Director of Threat Assessment for Ontic and the Director of Threat Assessment for Georgetown University
• Nigel Taylor, a Safeguarding specialist and consultant with 30 years of experience as a Head of independent schools in the United Kingdom and abroad

Reporting of low-level concerns: then and now

For many years, staff jotted down concerns about students on sticky notes or filed this information away in locked cabinets. “However, this information was often lost or not communicated to people who could intervene,” continued Dr. Grosso. While multiple staff members may notice concerns about the same student, these concerns are rarely brought together to create a holistic picture of the student’s situation. For example, a district psychologist recently related a story to Raptor about an eight-year-old child in Oregon, who was progressively starved to death by his parents. Multiple staff members had documented concerns about the student by filling out paperwork, but because this information was simply filed away, the collective information was not available to recognize the pattern of abuse.

Unfortunately, information about low-level concerns is often not communicated until a student has already become a threat to themselves or others. Dr. Marisa Randazzo, Executive Director of Threat Assessment for Ontic, agreed and added, “low-level concerns are often noted by multiple school staff members prior to events of mass violence, but until recently, teachers had no avenue to report such concerns.”

As Dr. Grosso said, “We have passed the time in our society where we can keep concerns on sticky notes or in folders.” This is where technology can really shine. Collecting student concerns in one streamlined database can help school mental health professionals and behavioral assessment teams identify, document, and manage student well-being in one connected system that proactively alerts them to issues.

Nigel Taylor, an expert in student safeguarding in the United Kingdom, relayed that similar “safeguarding” software has been used in the U.K. for many years now. According to Taylor, teachers appreciate the opportunity to have a direct positive impact on students’ lives by sharing the information they have already been collecting.

Early intervention: supporting students in distress before a crisis occurs

Another place where technology can shine is by guiding early intervention efforts. Dr. Grosso describes early intervention as a proactive, versus reactive, response to student distress. Low-level concerns can help direct early intervention efforts, allowing school mental health professionals to act before they become more serious.

Digital reporting of low-level concerns can help connect students with resources to support their emotional well-being. “When we hear about things earlier on and have a way to quickly see the different reports and concerns that are coming in from different people… we’ve got more latitude about the different support resources we can use… within the school [and] within the community,” said Dr. Randazzo.

Through early intervention, schools can often reach students before they require professional help. “If you get to them earlier, you don’t need to be looking outside for external support,” said Taylor. This is especially important given the scarcity of mental healthcare providers who specialize in the treatment of children. Early intervention in schools can help combat the current child mental health crisis by reducing the need for community mental health support.

Early intervention can also help prevent low-level concerns from escalating into acts of violence to self and others. Dr. Randazzo has found in her research that the perpetrators of school violence have often been struggling with personal problems for a long time and may even have reached a place of desperation where they no longer want to live.

Both school mental health professionals and behavioral threat assessment teams rely on reports from teachers to prevent students from reaching this desperate state. According to Dr. Randazzo, software-based systems can serve as an “information repository” for these experts, guiding early intervention and violence prevention efforts.