Roadmap for School Mental Health Improvement: Commitment
Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems rely on a shared commitment across members of the school-community, such as school and district staff, community partners, Out-of-School Time providers, students, and families. Each group plays a unique role in the process of improving school mental health systems, with different levels of commitment and types of collaboration.
The commitment stage includes assembling a representative team and establishing partnerships with key members of the school-community. “Coalitions and partnerships give participants ownership of the process and a ready pool of fiscal and human resources to support policy, systems, and environmental change strategies” (CDC 2021).
Regardless of role, everyone makes a shared commitment to gaining an accurate understanding of mental health, destigmatizing mental health, and working to change aspects of school and other systems that create inequities and act as barriers to well-being. This shared commitment to systems change, based on an accurate understanding of mental health and the social determinants of health, is the backbone of future improvement work.
Steps to Building Commitment
- Build support and commitment from the school-community and identify champions that recognize student and school staff mental health as central to a healthy community. Champions reflect the demographics of the community and include students and caregivers.
- Assemble a representative team or coalition to address key issues and establish relationships with key community partners.
- Increase mental health literacy in the school-community so that everyone has an accurate, shared understanding of mental health and the impacts of marginalization and trauma on mental health.
- Communicate a shared mission and vision of well-being for all students and staff that approaches mental health as an asset.
