Kelcey Schmitz leads the school mental health supplement that is part of the SAMHSA funded Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center that covers SAMHSA’s Region 10 states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. She recently joined the SMART Center from the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction where she was leading state-wide MTSS. She has worked with schools and districts in Washington and Kansas providing professional learning, coaching, and evaluation to meet the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of students within an MTSS framework. Prior to moving to Washington, she was part of the Kansas MTSS project. She has a Master’s Degree in Special Education from the University of Kansas.
(Training & Technical Assistance) In addition to regular training activities and special areas of focus, the Northwest Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (Northwest) has received funding to support increased training and technical assistance for school mental health in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. To operationalize this support Northwest has partnered with the University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center, a national leader in developing and supporting implementation of evidence-based practices (EBPs) in schools, including prevention, early intervention, and intensive supports. The Northwest School Mental Health (SMH) and Multi-tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Training and Technical Assistance (TA) Center, within the UW SMART Center, supports school mental health efforts with the goal to support states, districts, schools and community partners to build an equitable single system of delivery in which education and mental health systems are integrated across the tiers.
(Training & Technical Assistance) As a key component of this mission, UW SMART has developed strategies and related infrastructure for providing training and technical assistance to state and local education agencies as well as individual school districts. The SMART Center’s “TACore” provides: 1) Training and consultation/coaching focused on developing workforce capacity (among school staff and community partners) to deliver research-based strategies, policies, and practice models relevant to the education context, 2) Technical assistance focused on building evidence-based, multi-tiered systems of school-based behavioral health, using collaborative decision-making processes guided by local data as well as research evidence, and 3) Program evaluation focused on collecting and analyzing existing (e.g., administrative datasets) and novel (e.g., surveys, focus groups) quantitative and qualitative data to determine the impact of new or existing programs, practices, and policies.
What happens when training goes virtual? Adapting training and technical assistance for the school mental health workforce in response to COVID-19(2021)School Mental Health13:160-173.