How Mental Health Professionals Serve as Consumers and Providers of Information in School Safety

• In Event: Mental Health and Law Enforcement School Safety Partnerships

Abstract

In the Campus Shield project, the Miami Dade School Police Department is developing an information fusion center comprised of data from numerous sources – police records on calls for services and arrests; student behavioral data (absences, suspensions, and expulsions); demographic, housing and police incident data from local jurisdictions; gang activity; social media; and other sources. Data will be analyzed to identify emerging and immediate threats to schools. One key component of the project is the inclusion of mental health professionals, since Campus Shield is likely to unearth instances in which students express suicidal or self-harm thoughts, or threats against others. In this presentation, we describe project development, focusing on the role of mental health professionals as both providers and consumers of the information from Campus Shield within the context of HIPAA and FERPA privacy requirements regarding student data. That is, the mental health providers will receive information from the analytic tools and output from Campus Shield, and will use that to address immediate and evolving needs in schools. Mental health providers will also provide invaluable information to Campus Shield through a database developed for the project. We discuss both aspects of their role.

Authors

• Joseph McCrary, WestEd-Atlanta

• Kathryn Grogan, WestEd

• Dally Pelaez, Miami Dade County Public Schools