The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) “best practices toolkit” provides stakeholders with information regarding national guidelines for crisis care. To advance effective crisis systems, the document provides guidance for program design, development, implementation and continuous improvement efforts.
Learn more here.
NAMI advocates for a variety of policies that promote health and wellbeing for individuals living with mental illness. The organization fights to establish availability and access to the best care possible, diversion away from the criminal justice system, successful involvement in the community and effective interventions that help instead of worsen mental illness.
Visit their website here.
NCSSLE is an organization that promotes safe school environments. They provide training to teachers, support staff, families, and students. The organization also implements school climate surveys which are used to measure the safety of the environment and areas that need improvement.
Visit their website here.
School Connectedness promotes relationships between students and teachers. The program provides students with the emotional and social skills necessary to engage actively in school.
Learn more about the resource here.
Common Sense Education is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids through the development of peer relationships.
Visit their website here.
For each category we focus our policy recommendations on, we have a few goals. You can click on each heading below to see our recommendations filtered by topic.
Trauma-informed practices
Teach social emotional learning in schools
Create safe and warm school environments
Access to low cost, high-quality mental health treatment
Reduce stigma and increase knowledge of mental health and wellness
Funding for counselors, social workers, and mental health support in schools
Responsible media reporting on mass shootings
Hold (social) media companies accountable
Anonymous reporting
Teach media literacy
Limit active shooter drills for children
Situational crime prevention
Common sense firearms legislation
Making Caring Common is a program for children dedicated to building connection. They seek to teach children to treat people with kindness, to do what is right, and to understand fairness and justice.
Learn more about this resource here.
The WSCC model focuses on ten components which include physical education/activity, nutrition environment and services, health education, social/emotional climate, physical environment, health services, counseling/psychological/social services, employee wellness, community involvement, and family engagement. The WSCC model addresses the need to engage students as active participants in their learning and health.
You can learn more about the policy here.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) supports Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). This policy broadens the definition of student success by becoming more flexible, encourages schools to establish learning environments and enhance students’ effective learning skills, upholds critical protections for disadvantaged and high-need students, and broadens the approach to professional development and learning.
Read a summary of the act here.
Read the full bill here.
