Student Well-Being and COVID-19: From Needs Assessment to Implementing Interventions Within an MTSS Framework

• In Event: Supporting the Well-Being of School Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perspectives From Different School Stakeholders

Abstract

Objectives
The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented levels of stress and uncertainty in students of all ages. Mental health disorders are being diagnosed at alarming levels and their incidence continues to rise. Despite novel teaching modalities, schools served as a nexus for socio-emotional learning and student wellbeing to reach the majority of students. As the COVID pandemic continues to evolve and students return to in-person schooling, practices around assessing and intervening in student wellbeing support within a multi-tiered system of supports is becoming an educational imperative. This paper aims to illustrate how to design a locally and culturally responsive, data-driven approach to addressing the mental health needs of students in public schools.

Perspectives/Framework
This implementation work is guided by the multi-tier system support (MTSS) framework. The socio-emotional wellbeing of students is critical to their success in school. Research has demonstrated that when schools attend to social-emotional learning and implement interventions across different ecological subsystems, there are significant benefits to students across a range of outcomes. Efforts to promote the equitable implementation of culturally responsive interventions in local contexts are critical if schools are to address the impact of COVID on student mental health and support their re-entry into school.

Methods
Following a year-long pilot of conducting assessments of student wellbeing and the implementation of social-emotional supports in one school district, the authors designed and implemented a year-long course designed to support regional school districts in the development and implementation of supports for student wellbeing across varying levels of need. District participants included mental health professionals and administrators with the goal of better understanding each school's resources and need as well as designing a universal screener for their student population and implementing appropriate interventions across all tiers.

Results
Schools that participated in this course were able to gather data gathered around school-site-identified: needs; population-specific universal screeners; intervention design, implementation, and efficacy; and possible impacts on learning loss. It was found that using this data to guide the allocation of mental health resources positively impacted students at each site. Further, administrator involvement in the process allowed for a systematic multi-tiered approach to be more easily utilized across schools. Students at these sites benefited from multiple opportunities to access varying levels of socio-emotional interventions designed for their identified needs at each data-gathering interval.

Significance
Using a universal screening tool with follow-up measures and interviews allowed for the mental-health staff of these schools to use data-driven decision-making to best target their efforts to support students across tiers of need and tailor interventions to their identified needs. Further, the students supported through these interventions were grouped by specific need and received evidence-based interventions, and were implemented and evaluated for their efficacy within their site-specific population.

Authors

• Alejandra Ojeda-Beck, University of California - Berkeley

• Kate Perry, University of California - Berkeley

• Chunyan Yang, University of California, Berkeley