Best Practices: Suicide Prevention

On August 30, 2017, Sweetwater Union School District held: Best Practices: Suicide Prevention in Schools as part of a series of professional development opportunities it offered to school counselors in the district at their professional development center in Chula Vista. Richard Lieberman is a former School Psychologist for Los Angeles Unified School District.  Richard worked as an expert in the School Psychologist Suicide Prevention Unit and coordinated the "Youth Suicide Prevention Program" within the School Mental Health Division for the over 1200 schools and one million students, staff and parents of Los Angeles Unified School District.

As we were just starting our first week as interns, the session provided a perfect opportunity to obtain information about suicide and prepare for an issue that may emerge in the upcoming school year.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among young adults between the ages of 15-24, but school and district leaders are frequently unprepared to respond to a suicide event. In this training Richard Lieberman provided us with best practices to create suicide prevention and intervention programs we will share some important key points from the training.

Suicide What Should Schools Do? The Model Policy.

Richard lieberman discussed the importance of several different aspects of a model suicide policy. First, schools need to carefully plan curriculum units about youth suicide prevention. There is no single predictor to suicide and that is why it is so important for school counselors and staff to build relationships with students. ALL staff must receive training in risk factors and warning signs of suicide, suicide prevention, intervention, referral and postvention ANNUALLY. Schools not only need to offer training, but ensure the training is under direction of school mental health professionals. Each year it is important to adjust and review emerging best practices. The following are several things that protect students from youth suicide:

1. Good relationships with other youth
2. Seeks adult help when needed
3. Lack of access to suicidal means
4. Access to mental mental health care
5. Religiosity
6. School environment that encourages help seeking and promotes health
7. Family cohesion and stability
8. Coping and problem solving skills
9. Positive self worth and impulse control
10. Positive connections to school and extracurricular participation
11. Successful academically

Counselors must know the warning signs of suicide to best support students and advocate for them.

What should parents do?

Parents should be included in all suicide prevention efforts and policies and procedures should be shared. It is vital that  Policies easily accessed on webpages of school district that list warning signs of suicide, crisis helpline numbers and who to contact in the district for assistance. Parents also should not be afraid to have conversations about suicide. In additions parents should know and have access to the risk factors and warning signs of suicide. Parents should act immediately to get help and remove all lethal means within the household.

 

Cultural Considerations:

Another huge component discussed in interventions is taking cultures into consideration and knowing the community that you serve. This is done through the following:

1.  Identify cultural-related needs of community.
2. Obtain community resources to meet diverse needs.
3. Have prevention materials translated into native languages
4. Have translators available.
5. Know the traditions, rituals, and belief systems of your diverse population.

Evidence Based Prevention Curriculum

Signs of Suicide Prevention Program which was discussed as a resource in the training is incorporated into the suicide prevention curriculum and is the first school-based suicide prevention program to demonstrate significant reductions in self-reported suicide attempts. SOS is a school-based gatekeeper training for that incorporates suicide awareness with a brief screening for depression and other risk factors associated with suicidal behavior. The program is based on the action steps ACT “acknowledge, care, and tell”  through which individuals are taught to acknowledge the signs of suicide that others display and take them seriously, demonstrate care for the at-risk individual, and tell a responsible adult. The program’s teaching materials consist of a video and a discussion guide. The video features dramatizations that depict the signs of suicidality and depression and the recommended ways to react to someone who is depressed and suicidal. It also includes interviews with real people whose lives have been touched by suicide. Students also are asked to complete the Columbia Depression Scale (CDS), a brief screening instrument for depression, derived from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (Aseltine and DeMartino, 2004).

Postvention, now what?

Below is the postvention checklist. A few key aspects that we found to be important was ensuring school sites have memorial protocols. Schools also should avoid holding services on school grounds because all student deaths should be treated in the same way. In addition permanent memorials on campus should be discouraged. One great way to honor the student and bring the community together is to have grieving friends and family create a suicide prevention effort. The school and students can also partner and be involved in this.

Natalie Weinstein and Tessa Leon

California School Climate Health and Learning Survey System

The Strategic Use of your California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) training focused on how schools can effectively utilize data from the CHKS survey. The training was put on through the San Diego County Office of Education presented by Leslie Poyner. The training referred to what is commonly known as the CHKS survey to CalSCHLS, which stands for California School Climate, social-emotional and mental Health, and Learning supports and engagement through a Survey system sponsored by the California Department of Education. This survey has been used a measure for the US Department of Education in order to identify proactive factors that link directly to success in school, cares, and in life. CalSCHLS measures and asses school climate factors. School climate is composed of supports that engage school safety which include; high expectations, caring relationships, opportunities for meaningful participation, perceived school safety from school community members, and school connectedness. School climate also measures the violence, victimization, and substance use within a school community. A school’s school climate score ranges from 100 to 500, 300 being the mean average. The presentation explains the correlation between school climate and school performance. Schools in California that have a higher school climate index score, or what is known as “beating the odds,” typically have a higher amount of personal resources, higher levels of academic performance, and more support from adults at school; which is seen through high grades, increased school connectedness, less absences, and a sense of safety at school.

The presenter focused on a detailed explanation of how schools have effectively used CalSCHLS to increase school climate index scores. As mentioned prior, school climate encompasses a variety of factors. The school that was used as an example of how to increase the school climate decided to focus on the caring adults in school’s question of the survey. Their goal was to increase the percentage of 9^th and 11^th grade students to feel that some adult cares about them in the school setting. The presenter explained how the school utilized the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) model.  The Plan was to institute a graduation policy that required every student be enrolled in a non-academic organization each year of high school. All staff was required to offer a hands-on class any topic of their choice, and students would choose the class they wanted to be a part of in the beginning of the year. The Do aspect focused on the observation part of the plan. A high level of engagement was reported being seen amongst both students and staff because students were able to select a class based off their interests.  The Study component required revision of the school climate report card and the average score of students that believed there was a caring adult in school. The goal was to hopefully see an increase in the percentage of students that answered pretty much or very much true for the caring adults question. The district noted an increase after the program was implemented and the CalSCHLS survey was administered again. The Act component focused on reviewing the data examined and summarizing how the plan, do, and study aspects were carried out. Staff was noted to be more involved, specifically with students that they had struggled with behaviorally with in the past. Students were noted to have more trusting relationships with teachers, which allowed teachers to refer students appropriately, and student’s problems were being addressed more effectively.

The presenter had us review our CHKS data and do an activity that required us to look at various components within the schools we are interning at. She provided us with a prediction worksheet that required us to graph and predict the percentage of students that answered the question, and then afterward report the actual percentage so we could ultimately compare results. We looked at questions that focused on harassment of school property, caring relationships, academic motivation, and drug and alcohol use. This was a beneficial activity because it allowed us to note the difference in what we perceive versus what students are actually reporting based of their perceptions and experiences. Facilitating an activity like this with staff would be effective and would allow for a concrete illustration of the discrepancies and possible disconnect happening between staff and student perceptions of the school. 

This workshop was extremely beneficial, especially when it comes to reviewing CHKS data. In my experience working in various schools, a lot of the time the CHKS results are disregarded because it is seen as more work for counselors to review and analyze. However, as we can see from the example provided in the workshop, reviewing the data can make a major difference concerning various gaps that exist within a school. My one suggestion for this workshop would be to review more about analyzing the data, and noting what to focus on specifically.  Counselors or any district member reviewing the data would be more inclined to do so if there was a straight forward more procedural way of doing so. I would highly suggest that counselors at all levels attend a workshop like this in order to understand the importance the CHKS serves, and how it can be vital data that could transform one’s school.

Contact Leslie Poyner if you would like to learn more about this

Email: lpoyner@wested.org

californias3.wested.org

- Ella McParlane 

Hatching Your School Counseling Program

On October 31, 2017, I attended a professional development conference held at the Pomona Unified School District. The conference’s material was presented by Dr. Trish Hatch and Danielle Duarte, which was called Hatching Your School Counseling Program. One of the workshop’s objectives was that school counselors will be prepared to share results of curriculum presentations and interventions with staff and school board. As a current fieldwork student at the PUSD, it was important that I attended this professional growth opportunity because it gave me important insight on the direction in which the district is moving towards and will enable me to support this shift by aligning my future work to meet our new district standards.

A significant portion of this professional development centered around flashlight presentations and marketing. The counseling techniques that were taught during this conference would be extremely useful when school counselors are scheduled to present to school staff or the school board. As we all know, school counselors have numerous responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is presenting our lessons’ results to multiple stakeholders. During this conference, Dr. Hatch focused on teaching Tier 1: Core Curriculum Action Plans K – 12. Each grade level contained the following information: core lesson content, curriculum, ASCA Domain/Mindset, projection start/end date, and evaluation methods. An important aspect of the material that was covered during this conference was how are results measured. Due to the partnership between PUSD and CCGI, the evaluation method was tailored to PUSD’s specific needs, but can also be replicated and used with other districts who are partnered with CCGI. Dr. Hatch explained that the results could be evaluated differently depending on grade level. Since there were numerous ways to evaluate results, I have attached a list that identifies various methods to measure your results by grade level. Furthermore, Danielle emphasized the importance of creating flashlight presentations so that school counselors can present their results to stakeholders. Multiple flashlights were presented, and a flashlight rating scale rubric was given to all school counselors. The significance of the flashlight presentation training was that we learned that the presentations can be used to demonstrate how the school counselors work is aligned to LCAP, Strategic Plans, and Student Outcomes. When implementing these counseling techniques, one should be mindful that the results may not always reflect growth in a certain area; however, the results can be used to advocate for additional services for students and/or highlight the steps that are being taken to meet the needs of the students. Moving forward, I plan on using these skills to market my school counseling program and to showcase the work that the school counseling team and I have been doing. 

-Jonathan Flores 

CCGI Lesson Action Plans 

Decolonizing Methodologies: Working with Native and Indigenous Youth

 


Who? What? When? Where? Why? 

Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, author of Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, was sponsored to visit San Diego through University of San Diego's Ethnic Studies Department. She visited the Native American Scholars and Collaborators Project (NASCP) Seminar at San Diego State University with the help of USD's arrangements. The event was held on Monday, November 6th, 2017 at San Diego State University. The evening was set up as a seminar where current and former Native Scholars, Native Community Leaders, professors and community members were invited to join a talk led by Dr. Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Attending this event was an incredible opportunity to hear from and dialogue with Dr. Smith about the application of decolonizing methodologies for myself, as an individual and professional, while also understanding how I can support Native American and Indigenous students as a future school counselor.

Major Takeaways

Dr. Smith gave us insight into her own journey in the education system as an Indigenous womxn and was able to expand on the experiences many students face. Her work with students were similar year after year at the school level, that Maori culture was not celebrated and the students didn't feel like they belong. She discussed how she transitioned to working on policy and the challenges that come with being not only the only womxn of color, but the only Maori womxn at the table. She emphasized how crucial it was for all change agents to find an ally or two that support your work, especially when things become overwhelming and frustrating.

The techniques that we learned in this seminar were tailored towards working with Native and Indigenous youth. A major theory engrained in all of her work is a decolonizing lens, and the mindset that we as educators should be there to allow students to be who they truly are and avoid inflicting harm. This means not perpetuating the cycle of colonization. Our role is to celebrate our student's culture's and all of the knowledge that they come with. If we are able to tap into that knowledge, as educators, we can build healthy, supportive relationships that empower our students to be who they are, in all of their glory.

In the school counseling context, it is crucial that we are aware of the systemic issues that are in place that place barriers to learning for our Native and Indigenous youth. This can be done through intentionality and awareness around issues that Native American and Indigenous youth face like awareness of generational trauma, mistrust with the educational system in the United States, and current inequities that their communities are facing. I appreciated the emphasis on taking a systemic approach when addressing the barriers Native and Indigenous may face, and advocating for policy change that allows for critical review of protocols, policies and practices that may be enabling systemic oppression. In addition, school counselors can advocate for representation of Indigenous communities not only in the schools' staff but also in the curriculum and literature students are learning.