by Rachel Barret, LICSW - Certificated School Social Worker & Clinical Instructor, University of Washington & Debra Limon, Tiered Tools
You’ve invested staff time, energy and building budget to implement universal Tier 1 strategies. You look around your school and see consistent routines and school-wide expectations are being taught by staff; however, the school counselor and social worker are telling you their waitlist is full and your assistant principal is recommending suspensions for the group of boys waiting in your office (again). How do you know which Tier 2 interventions to choose and how to initiate them?
As Tier 3 behavioral health consultants for a large school district, we regularly visited schools with solid Tier 1 implementation who still had concerning clusters of discipline referrals and students presenting with social-emotional needs. We found that too often the response was... Continue reading...
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 Not all supports need to be offered to everyone, and not all supports have to be offered to individual students either. But what do group supports look like? Who offers them? How does that work with a school schedule? We want to share with you ideas on ways you can level up your tier II supports. Learn about the strategic team staffing that will provide greater access to resources. We’ll be hosting University of Washington’s Rachel Barret and her colleague Debra Limon to share some pro tips to inspire you. We’ll also have a panel of practitioners to share what this work looks like in Ocosta, and Burlington-Edison. Free Clock Hours are available through pdEnroller.
Leadership Team Activities Care Package
 Do you want your team to take a deeper look at Tier II Solutions for Student Well-being? We’ve crafted activities that take 5-10 minutes, 20-30 minutes, and 90 minutes for you! Take a look at toolkits, reflection questions, and more. Check out this month’s Care Package.
Watch this short video on the Top 5 things you should know about Tier II Solutions for Student Well-being:
 Tier 2 practices and systems provide targeted support for students who are not successful with Tier 1 supports alone. The focus is on supporting students who are at risk for developing more serious unwanted behavior before they start. Essentially, the support at this level is more focused than Tier 1 and less intensive than Tier 3. Tier 2 supports often involve group interventions with ten or more students participating.
Specific Tier 2 interventions include practices such as social skills groups, self-management, and academic supports. Targeted interventions like these, implemented by typical school personnel, are likely to have positive effects for up to 67% of referred students. Tier 2 interventions are:
- Continuously available
- Accessible within 72 hours of referral
- Very low effort by teachers
- Aligned with school-wide expectations.
- Implemented by all staff/faculty in a school.
- Flexible and based on assessment.
- Function-based
- Allocated adequate resources
- Student chooses to participate.
- Continuously monitored
Read more about foundational systems in Tier 2.
Read Implementing School Mental Health Supports
Recommendations from the National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments:
- Align Programs Across a Continuum of Services
- Incorporate Youth and Family Voices
- Engage Leadership in Implementation Planning and Support
- Build Staff Mental Health Capacity
- Utilize Data for Continuous Quality
Improvement (CQI)
- Build School–Community Partnerships
Read more: Implementing School Mental Health Supports: Best Practices in Action
 Student data tells us that students in our state are experiencing significant mental health need. On the last Healthy Youth survey, which surveyed students in schools across WA in Oct 2021, 10th grade students:
- 69% of students said they felt nervous, anxious, or on edge in the past two weeks
- Over half of student surveyed said they were unable to stop or control worrying at times over the past two weeks
- Over a third said they experienced at least a two week period over the year where they felt so sad or hopeless that they stopped doing some of their usual activities
 Suicidality:
- 20% said they considered attempting suicide, 16% made a plan to commit suicide, and 8% attempted suicide
We also know that trauma impacts the way our students experience each of these indicators, with students that have experienced more trauma reporting higher levels of need across all of these MH indicators, that impact is particularly stark when we think about historical trauma, where we see significant differences based on student identify (race/ethnicity & gender/sexuality)
- 37% of American Indian/Alaska Native students contemplated suicide
- 46% of gay, lesbial, or bisexual contemplated suicide
- 58.8% of transgender students contemplated suicide
15% of students surveyed also said that they felt like they had no adults to turn to when they felt sad of hopeless. It is imperative that foster connections with staff in the school community, particularly those for those who doesn’t currently feel they have an adult connection strong enough to lean on when they need support. Robust Tier II supports can be can help foster those relationships and respond to need in student before it escalates to crisis level.
Performance measures, or key performance indicators (KPIs), serve as a compass for identifying areas that require attention, drive continuous improvement effort decisions, and provide the necessary structure to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of processes, projects, and organizations. Knowing how to identify, integrate, and monitor them in projects and processes is a critical step to successfully implementing any continuous improvement effort. Keep in mind that an identified performance measure can be qualitative (interpretation-based or descriptive) or quantitative (numerical data).
Begin by defining clear objectives for your project or process. By identifying your goals and priorities, you can then determine the KPIs that are most relevant to your objectives and directly align to your goals. They might include measures like academic progress, number of students served, percent ... Continue reading
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Nikki York
School Social Worker and Behavioral Health Program Supervisor, OSPI, nikki.york@k12.wa.us
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