For more than a year staff of the Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) have been increasingly focused on ways to expand school based mental health services. PDE has made a commitment of $1,000,000 to promote the development of collaborative school based mental health services.
Grants
to School Districts
During the next several weeks PDE will release to school districts a request
for proposal for school based behavioral health services. It is expected that
five to ten projects will be funded to:
- Support the establishment of comprehensive, cross-community school-based behavioral health services and the expansion of existing services; develop a repository of effective practice programs and services; develop cross-agency, integrated service/education planning, and cross-agency professional development; and
- Enable state school entities to formulate the design and the implementation of expanded partnerships among schools, provider agencies, and stakeholders to support the delivery of comprehensive school-based behavioral health services throughout the commonwealth.
The department expects to award grants of $100,000 - $150,000 each. Grant planning will need to be collaborative and include parents/caregivers and youth/young adults in the development. Each project will be required to report cross-system performance data reflecting the project’s impact on individual student progress in the academic, behavioral, and clinical areas.
PCPA is encouraging community providers interested in collaborative school based services to begin now to contact local districts who may be interested in pursuing this opportunity.
