Strategies

Implement focused efforts to help children recognize and manage emotions, set and reach goals, appreciate others’ perspectives, and maintain relationships; also called social and emotional learning (SEL)

Train school staff or students to identify signs of suicidality, screen students for suicide risk, or deliver a curriculum-based program that helps all students learn to recognize warning signs of suicide in themselves and others

Help students process trauma exposure and develop coping skills through individual or small group counseling with mental health professionals or school staff with trauma-specific training

Address students’ disruptive and antisocial behavior by teaching self-awareness, emotional self-control, self-esteem, social problem solving, conflict resolution, team work, social skills, etc.

Provide students from public schools, from low income backgrounds, or who have a high risk of dropping out and their families with information about social services and health care supports; also called community resource or family and community liaisons

Support a trauma-informed juvenile justice system to recognize and respond to trauma’s impact on youth through staff training and broad adoption of trauma-informed practices and policies

Adopt a multi-tiered approach within schools to address the needs of trauma-exposed youth, including school-wide changes, screenings, and individual intensive support

Place youth with mental, emotional, and behavioral health challenges in foster families that provide a structured, nurturing, therapeutic environment; also called Therapeutic Foster Care (TFC)

Place severely and chronically delinquent youth in foster families that are trained in structured behavior management and connected to TFCO program staff; formerly called Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care

Transfer youth who are arrested from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal justice system by discretionary transfer decisions or transfer qualifying criteria