School Based Mental Health: The Structure of the Partnership Matters

Our current mental health system is struggling to meet the needs of today's youth and school-based mental health is seen as an integral part of this equation. This involves partnerships between school districts and community-based mental health clinics. The structure of these partnerships can determine aspects of teaming and delineation of roles and responsibilities for both parties. The focus of the present study is to examine the impact of the structure of the partnership on programmatic outcomes. Particular aspects of the structure of the partnership such as type of contracted services agreed to by the mental health provider and resources brought to the agreement by the school including administrative support, office space and funding were investigated. We studied process and outcomes of 59 schools across Wisconsin which were receiving outside mental health services through Children's Wisconsin. The findings revealed that each aspect of the partnership enhanced detectability of emotional and behavioral problems in students, including historically hard to reach diagnoses, increased collaboration between the school team and the community mental health provider, and grew parental involvement in their child's care. The authors conclude that thoughtful planning of the structure of such public/private partnerships can have implications for the mental health care of children and may help align objectives between the education and mental health systems which already have a shared interest in certain indicators of childhood functioning.