Safe Schools and Healthy Students State Planning Project
The New Hampshire Department of Education (NHDOE) Bureau of Special Education received an $8.6 million grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to carry out a four-year Safe Schools and Healthy Students State Planning Project.
Oversight & Coordination
Working alongside the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services' Bureau of Behavioral Health (BBH), the NHDOE serves as the oversight and coordinating entity responsible for putting the project into practice.
Implementation
Known as NH Communities for Children, the project will be carried out across three New Hampshire school districts and their communities: Concord, Laconia, and Rochester.
Goals
Alongside these efforts, NHDHHS' Division for Children, Youth and Families, Juvenile Justice Services, Bureau of Drug and Alcohol Services, Office of Minority Health and Refugee Affairs, NH Parent and Family Organizations, Regional Mental Health Centers, and other partners will collaborate closely throughout the four-year period to achieve the following goals in each of the three communities:
- Greatly strengthen the social and emotional skills and readiness for long-term educational success of young children, from birth through age five,
- Greatly improve the mental, emotional, and behavioral health of children and youth while reducing school violence, bullying, behavior problems, suspensions, substance abuse, and punitive or exclusionary discipline practices,
- Greatly improve behavioral health outcomes for the highest-need children, youth, and their families and caregivers,
- Greatly increase the involvement of families and youth in decision-making at every level
- Greatly lower risk factors and build up protective factors at the individual, family, and community level to reduce the prevalence of alcohol and other drug misuse among school-aged children.
- Build and maintain a formal state-level, cross-agency collaborative structure for identifying needs, implementing evidence-based practices, sharing and targeting data and resources, changing policy, and delivering cross-discipline professional development