School Mental Health: The Impact of State and Local Capacity-Building Training

Abstract

Despite a growing number of collaborative partnerships between schools and community-based organizations to expand school mental health (SMH) service capacity in the United States, there have been relatively few systematic initiatives focused on key strategies for large-scale SMH capacity building with state and local education systems. Based on a framework of ten critical factors for capacity building, as well as existing best practices, two case studies were utilized to develop a replicable capacity-building model to advance interagency SMH development. Seventy education and mental health stakeholders from two selected states participated in baseline assessments of skill com-petency and critical factor implementation followed by two-day trainings (one in each state); 29 (41%) of the participants also completed a six month follow-up assessment. Targeted competencies increased significantly for participants from both states, with large effect sizes (d = 2.05 and 2.56), from pre- to post-training. Participant reports of critical factor implementation increased significantly for one of the two states (t[15] = -6.40, p < .001, d = 1.77). Results inform specific training recommendations for stakeholders and collaborative teams, as well as policy implications to support future development of SMH service capacity.