Transcript: Seeing Every Student: Universal Screening for Wellbeing and Belonging

Timothy Ojetunde (00:09):

Every student navigates school through their own unique experience. We as educators strive to support all students in that journey, especially when it comes to academic achievement and student wellbeing. Despite teachers’ efforts, there are still systemic gaps when it comes to providing support for students. This might manifest as students’ chronic absenteeism, academic achievement, sense of belonging, and more. One way schools and districts are working towards proactive support for all students’ social and emotional wellbeing is through universal screeners. In this audiocast, we will learn about the creation of a universal screener instrument developed by University of California in Santa Barbara and validated by over 1.2 million students across California. We will also learn how Baldwin Park Unified, a school district located in Los Angeles County, uses the screener to move the needle for each student they serve. My name is Timothy Ojtinde, and in addition to my voice, you will hear from Dr.

(01:06):

Erin Dowdy, a University of California Santa Barbara professor and director of Mental Health Collaborative, and Alicia Fields, the director of student services at Baldwin Park Unified. To get us started, Erin explains why universal screening is important, especially when there is a great deal of emphasis on attendance, academic performance, and students’ sense of belonging.

Erin Dowdy (01:28):

Universal screening really provides us with an easy access point to all students to provide everyone an equal opportunity to share how they’re doing. Certainly, LEAs need to be thinking about social, emotional, behavioral, mental health of their students. We know that if they are having difficulties in any of these areas, they’re going to be barriers to learning and doing well in school, whether that is not showing up to school because they’re feeling anxious or whether it is they don’t feel connected to school, that this is not a safe or fun, exciting place to be. And so we really think that by providing this preventative oriented approach, allowing all students the opportunity to share about their own social emotional wellbeing, that we can gather quick information to help us inform our multi-tiered systems of support. The universal screening is a tier one service and using that data to inform tier two and tier three service delivery, both at the school-wide level and district level.

Timothy Ojetunde (02:30):

Erin further elaborates by explaining the creation of the CARES universal screener and how it supports districts and schools as they support students.

Erin Dowdy (02:38):

The CARES stands for the Comprehensive Assessment of Resilience and Emotional Strengths. Initially, a lot of this work started with a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, and in partnership with WestEd, we work to develop many of the instruments that are a part of the CARES. It has been developed and validated by over 1.2 million California students. It is a quick universal screener designed to look at social-emotional distress, social-emotional wellbeing, and school connectedness. There are a couple different components. We have a student wellness index, and this builds upon a complete mental health framework. It’s saying basically a student isn’t well just because they have the absence of psychopathology or distress symptoms. We want to ask about symptoms of their wellbeing in addition to symptoms of distress. So to get a good idea of their complete mental health, we ask them five items about their social-emotional distress.

(03:35):

And so these are symptoms of anxiety and depression and distress. And then we also ask them five items about their life satisfaction, whether it is how they’re feeling about themselves, their school life, their family life, and get a good sense of their life satisfaction. Those items combine into an overall wellness index, which really provides good information, quick index that school psychologists, school care teams, school mental health professionals, even teachers can use to follow up with students.

Timothy Ojetunde (04:03):

Understanding universal screening is important, but the context and what it looks like is also key. Alicia goes into detail about how Baldwin Park Unified actually prepares to screen all students using the CARES universal screener at the start of the year and how they set the culture for this work.

Alicia Fields  (04:20):

For Baldwin Park Unified, it really starts with a shared vision supporting mental health and how that fits within our multi-tier systems of support. That really starts at our highest levels of leadership. So starting with our board, our seniors and cabinet leadership, and really understanding that vision about supporting students and the whole child. But then once we’ve established that and that’s a part of the district way of doing things, we really utilize the power of communication to stress the importance and purpose of the screener. Why is a screener something that we believe would benefit our students? We talk about it with our stakeholders and we get the word out about how we support our students so that it’s not something that is surprising, but it’s a part of our district and school-wide culture. We have that shared leadership, we have that shared vision, we communicate, then we roll out our plans to our stakeholders.

(05:29):

We make sure that we’re sharing when there’s going to be training. We identify our stakeholders who are involved with supporting our students in the areas of mental health and provide them with direct support, professional development in the administration of our survey, as well as follow-up steps as to how to identify students who are at need or who might be elevated and needing additional assistance and attention. And then we work with those teams to train them on what are our supports that we offer in the district at a tier one, tier two, and tier three level, and we refer students to those supports in a timely manner so that we’re addressing whatever their mental health needs might be quickly.

Timothy Ojetunde (06:18):

Alicia also described how the support team implements this process.

Alicia Fields  (06:22):

Throughout the year, how we support students in all areas is an ongoing conversation, but we do so with intentionality. It’s really important to provide that screener to our students early and make sure that we’re getting that information early on so that we have adequate time to facilitate our process and to then refer them for resources and support. We provide our training to our stakeholders in August. That’s our goal is always to get that training done. Once we get back, our mental health support team, our administrators, our school psychologists, our counselors, outside mental health agencies, we all know what the plan is and the expectations for timeline. They get to learn about the screener, they see what the questions that the students experience are, what they look like, what they feel like, and the process behind the scenes. Myself and my team are available for our stakeholders to provide support at all of our sites.

(07:24):

So that happens in August with the intention of and the target date of administration for the survey being in September. So that way students have a chance to acclimate a little bit into the school year, but it’s still very early on so that we have enough adequate time to be able to identify students who might need support, who might be struggling in life satisfaction or with their concept of self or struggling with coping or anxiety, whatever that distress that students are experiencing, we have ample time to be able to interview that student, talk to that student, and then connect them with resources early in the year so that that way we have time to really work on those skills to increase their life satisfaction score.

Timothy Ojetunde (08:13):

Erin pointed out the importance that the screener not focus solely on stressors, but incorporates questions about students’ positive interactions to help students develop value, connection and belonging at school.

Erin Dowdy (08:26):

We also realize that there’s a lot more than just complete mental health that is really important for the school context. So then we ask about school connectedness. These are items that have been a part of the California Healthy Kids Survey for many years, quick five items asking about their sense of belonging and connectedness to school. This is really important to have valuable information for schools to be able to enhance their sense of school connectedness and be able to analyze their data from students about how students are feeling with regard to being connected to school. The other additional component also aligned with the complete mental health approach, we have a social emotional health survey, and those are quick 12 items that ask students about their belief in themselves, their belief in others, their own emotional competence and their feelings of engaged living. So things like gratitude or optimism.

(09:17):

We find it really important and valuable to schools to ask questions that are not just distress or mental health problem oriented, but really asking about their sense of strengths because we find that what gets measured is what results in different interventions, and we know the power of resilience interventions, positive psychology interventions, and how those can be really helpful. All of those together is quick 27 items that are a part of the CARES. It’s the social emotional distress, the student life satisfaction, the school connectedness, and the social emotional health, and all of those come together for a quick student self-reported assessment of their emotional wellbeing.

Timothy Ojetunde (10:00):

For some, administering the universal screener is part of the process they feel most successfully. But what happens after that? What specific steps are taken to identify students in need of additional supports and to provide timely interventions? Alicia gives us firsthand insight into how Baldwin Park responds and provides support.

Alicia Fields  (10:21):

Once we administer the screeners, we’re able to get real time data on what the students’ scores are. Once they’ve completed the survey, our mental health support teams then deploy and they meet with students who score in low life satisfaction, who have a CWSI California Wellness School Index score, 15% lower. We look at those students and we say, “Okay, this is our target area. Let’s meet with these students.” And so we make sure all of our mental health team is available. They meet with each student individually and they not only review where they’re struggling and they talk about the purpose of their meeting and how they’re there as a support and as someone, a touchpoint to assist them so that they have whatever they need to feel better and to be their best selves, but we also look at their strengths. That’s a really cool aspect of this survey.

(11:19):

It’s not just about where students are struggling, but it also catapults on where students have strengths and students are recommended for certain interventions and supports. And that could be check-in, check-out, that could be social groups, that could be small groups, that could be counseling, that could be some type of community resource that we might have available to them that is specific to their area of need. And then following the interview, we contact parent and here are some of the outcomes of that interview and conversation while maintaining confidentiality. We always inform student of, “Hey, is it okay if we contact parent?” And we just give them a summary of what we talked about, especially because if it’s a referral for counseling, we do also need that consent from parents. We want to partner with them and we’re on the same team and be communicative about how we supported their student in this process as well.

(12:17):

It doesn’t just stop there. We’re able to get data that informs our processes at tier one, tier two, and tier three at the most intense level, but also at a school-wide level. And so site leaders are able to talk to their school teams, and here’s what the data says about school belonging. This is the percentage of students that feel like they’re connected here at school. What is this telling us about our processes? What is this telling us about our activities that we plan? How can we use this with intentionality in our decision-making process? We look at data as a whole, as a district that helps us plan and future map what support and intervention we’re able to provide and identify financial priorities for students as it relates to what preventions and which particular activities we want to provide for them. As we administer in the beginning of the year, we take the time to meet with those students.

(13:14):

As soon as the administration’s completed, we assign them with those resources and interventions, and then we connect with parent, but we also connect with our school communities and keep the conversation going with our district communities and our board.

Timothy Ojetunde (13:30):

Erin then went on to describe emerging challenges and opportunities she has observed related to universal screening.

Erin Dowdy (13:37):

Within California, trying to figure out different funding mechanisms, whether that’s through CYBHI, different wellness coaches, I think that these are areas of opportunities as schools are trying to figure out how to fund various efforts and also to ensure that students are getting the services they need. I know historically and continuing our school’s concerns that what happens if we work to identify all these students and then we don’t have enough manpower, enough support to help all the students? We’re really finding that schools are getting to the point where they are using data to help inform their efforts to determine how many service providers they need or how they’re going to link with other mechanisms or who within schools can help bolster school connectedness. I think schools are starting to figure out their multi-tiered systems of support and that this can be more easily incorporated into things that they’re already working on.

(14:37):

I would say there are a lot of opportunities ahead. I think that schools are now at a position where they’re really trying to think about how can they help support students’ social emotional wellbeing and mental health. There are tools that have been developed and validated for use that are readily available. I know now WestEd has been working hard to have a system that is available for schools to use and a data dashboard that many schools are familiar with using. Also, schools have figured out some of these infrastructure pieces that are really helpful to engage in really needed tier one type of services like universal screening. So many schools have already figured out how they’re doing universal screening for a variety of different academic concerns. They already have multi-tiered systems of support care teams set up that can take on this task of working together to help better support students’ social, emotional, and mental health needs.

Timothy Ojetunde (15:37):

Baldwin Park is using actionable data to support the school community and improve student outcomes as a result of using the CARES universal screener. Alicia closes us out with the work being done and the systems that have been put in place in the district as a result of the screener.

Alicia Fields  (15:52):

There’s been a lot of outcomes that we’ve observed and we’ve been able to obtain really powerful data on emotional distress and student life satisfaction. It gives us a very precision focused kind of opportunity to learn about our students. We’re able to be really intentional about identifying which students need the support. In our district, we were able to have an incredibly high participation rate in the 90 percentile. The higher the participation rate, the more impactful we can be with our interventions and support. It’s really important to work with families and parents to understand the survey so they opt in because what we’ve learned is for younger families, they don’t really necessarily understand the value of the survey yet, and so there might be a little bit of a hesitance, but we’ve increased those numbers for our secondary kiddos. That’s really promising. Looking at our social emotional distress scale, we learned that 69% of our students who participated in CARES reported low to no distress.

(17:03):

That’s amazing. But what that also tells us, there are 6% of students who reported high stress. So that 6% of students we want to laser focus on, but we also want to keep an eye on this other 94%, what’s going well, what’s happening right, what are the positive indicators for them? We were able to ascertain really interesting information as it relates to school level. We learned that the older you are, the more positive your perspective becomes. Maybe it’s just the wisdom that comes along with development. It also speaks to the efficacy and the impact of our interventions. All the outcomes we’ve been able to get from our survey have helped to inform our practice and improvement of our practice and how we support students. We have short-term bridge counseling that we provide to any student in our district, regardless of their insurance. Doesn’t matter because we partner with an outside mental health agency.

(18:04):

We pay for that and that agency will have seven to 10 sessions with the student if they’re referred for bridge counseling. So that’s one of the options. We also can refer a student to long-term mental health supports. Let’s say maybe they are scoring elevated, they were already in bridge and they need a little bit more consistent mental health check-in and support, we’ll refer to long-term. We’ve referred to check-in check-out, social skills groups, conflict resolution contracts, restorative practices, tutoring, intervention. This has been something that we have used that we have seen works. It works for kids. It helps improve their lives, and that means a lot. We’re not just helping to educate, this is helping to improve their lives.

Timothy Ojetunde (18:55):

Thank you for listening and thank you to Dr. Aaron Dowdy from the University of California Santa Barbara and Alicia Fields from Baldwin Park Unified. We hope you enjoyed this audio. Baldwin Park Unified continues to use the CARES universal screening administered in partnership with WestEd as part of its ongoing speaking mental health support system. The California Department of Education has been implementing Project CalWOL in partnership with LEAs throughout California with funding support from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration under the Project AWARE grant since 2014. For more resources, please visit the California Safe and Supporter Project CalWOL website. To learn more about the CARES universal screener, visit cares.wested.org.