leadership in high schools

University of Buffalo Professor of Social Work, Mansoor Kazi visited the Hewes Center on Monday, 1/26/09 in the company of Melody Morris, Chautauqua County Mental Health.  Present at this meeting were the School Nurse, School Resource Officer, School Counselor and a Teacher/  The purpose of this visit was to solicit information concerning student mental health, school response/interventions and community overlap in responding to crisis amongst students in a K-12 school setting.  This 9 million dollar, 6 year study funded by the State Department of Education in collaboration with University of Buffalo is aimed at discovering Community Crosswalks between schools, home and agencies employed to address mental health and mental health crises in the community. 

The goals of  our school are focused around this 6 year study are to seek trained, professional mental health therapists who can monitor the state of crises within our school setting, study our responses, document these and input this data into a computerized system.  Over  time the findings of Dr. Kazi it is hoped will enable schools to document,implement and develop documented workable, response strategies to student crises within schools and in the community. 

To this end, we at the Hewes Center have agreed to allow the study access to student disabilities, discipline records, family social histories, anecdotal notes of the school resource officer, counselors/social workers, nursing information provided to the school health office and correlate these records with the Department of Probation and Social Services including county mental health.  Obviously this level of access will require Board and parent approval but in the interim it is our hope that 2 county mental health therapists can be assigned to our educational center to assist our school in beginning the preliminary work that is necessary to garner local support and understanding for this huge project. 

Mansoor A. F. Kazi Research Associate Professor and Director, Program Evaluation Center Office: 232B Parker Hall Phone: (716) 829-3991 x 161, Fax: (716) 829-3992 Office: 671 Baldy Hall Phone: (716) 645-3381 x 232 Email: mkazi@buffalo.edu

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