![[Table of Contents]](/icons/up.gif){kind=icon}
"Safe Schools/Healthy Students"
Missoula, Montana
| Partners: | Missoula County Public Schools Western Montana Mental Health Center Missoula Police Department Missoula District/Youth Court | |
Encompassing a land area approximately the size of the state of Delaware, Missoula County has been experiencing increasingly high rates of poverty, unemployment, and violence related to the region's continual population growth. Over the past 10 years, Missoula County has grown by 13%, a factor which has changed the fabric of life in the community. Statistics have shown that criminal behavior, including felony assault, rape, and robbery, has increased by 53%, and incidents of domestic violence by more than 31 %. Home ownership is unattainable by 60% of the residents, since the 19% poverty rate exceeds both state and national averages. Impact of the area's growth, however, is most apparent in the behavior of the county's youth. From 1993 to 1996, alcohol and other drug citations increased at a rate twice the national average, while 35% of the youth indicate life is not worth living. The school district, in which 34% of the students qualify for free or reduced cost lunch, serves 9,214 students in 11 elementary schools, four middle schools, and four high schools.
The partners in the program have a rich and varied history of collaborative prevention and intervention approaches, targeted at societal and cultural conditions underlying high risk youth behavior. Additional community partners include the University of Montana, Turning Point (currently the state's only intensive outpatient treatment program for adolescents), Alliance Reduction Task Force, Family Basics/WORD, the Early Childhood Consortium, and Even Start.
This initiative is designed to complete the continuum of services and programs for all of Missoula's youth and families through the establishment of school-based resource teams (SRT). The teams (school personnel, youth prevention specialists, family advocates, school resource officers, mental health specialists, and youth probation officers) will provide a coordinated and comprehensive network of outreach, assessment, prevention, intervention, linkage, and referral for students and their families. (The school resource officers will be funded by the U.S. Department of Justice's COPS Office.) This initiative will address early childhood psychosocial and emotional development needs by enhancing the capacity of "Neighborhood Nurse" to provide critical home-visiting services to at-risk families in targeted areas. The initiative will also use Even Start team members to provide family literacy programs, pre-school, and enhanced daycare for at-risk families. For elementary, middle, and high school students, the initiative will increase after-school activities, summer programming, and school-community interaction. To reduce school factors conducive to school crime and to enhance school safety, a Youth Probation Officer working with the SRT will facilitate transitions for students returning to school from a juvenile justice placement. Flexible alternative educational programs will be in place to help at-risk students achieve success.
Evaluation services will be provided by the University of Montana using a Likert scale adaptation of the 23 items contained in Early Warning Signs: Timely Response published by the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice.
-###-
[Gallup, New Mexico]