Program Description

The Southeast South-Central Educational Cooperative (SESC) was awarded a 5 year grant from the US Department of Education to establish the SESC Equitable Mental Health Access Program.  The project’s primary goal is to increase long-term access to high quality school-based mental health services for students attending high-need schools in the SESC region.  SESC intends to accomplish this by 1) assisting Institutes of Higher Education (IHEs) to train and prepare mental health professionals for delivering services in school settings, 2) assisting community-based mental health agencies to place mental health clinicians in school settings, 3) assisting IHEs, mental health agencies, and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) with matching graduate students’ and existing practitioners who are placed in school settings with characteristics of the student populations being served , and 4) by providing training, coaching and technical assistance to LEAs for creating effective mental health service delivery systems by utilizing an evidence-based model called the Interconnect Systems Framework (ISF).  

The desired outcomes for this project are to 1) increase the number of graduate students and mental health professionals providing services in high-need school settings and 2) increase the number of P-12 students accessing school-based mental health services in high-need school settings.  The design of this project is intended to improve the “student to mental health service professional ratio” to reflect the American School Counselor Association’s recommended ratio of 250:1 in the high-need LEAs selected in SESC’s service region.