SDPC Behavioral Threat Assessment and Suicide Prevention Training and Case Management Project

The School District of Pickens County (SC) is proposing this project to further enhance the development and implementation of behavioral threat assessment teams districtwide by providing threat assessmenttraining, suicide prevention training, and the implementation of an electronic case management software. This project will further build on the district’s efforts to address the problem of school violence by providing additional tools to support our staff and students. Although the district has made significant strides in school safety and mental health supports, SDPC still faces critical challenges and roadblocks in addressing the potential for violence and improving school climate.These challenges have resulted in the need, especially at the campus level, for more detailed trainings and tools to support suicide prevention and threat assessment. Additionally, the ability to examine information more critically, to make data-driven decisions for our threat assessment and suicide prevention programs is critical.

Therefore, to continue to address these challenges, SDPC has adopted the U.S. Secret Service threat assessment model, which outlines the following steps: 1) receive/screen threats; 2) gather information; 3) analyze information; 4) make an assessment; and 5) develop a trauma-informed and developmentally appropriate plan. In this project, we aim to enhance our multidisciplinary teams across our district by implementing this evidence-based BTA model through an accessible eLearning training platform as well as an electronic case management tool to support the effective implementation of our teams. Additionally, and to further provide the necessary knowledge and skills to our staff, we will also implement an eLearning platform to deliver a suicide prevention training program. We plan to implement these new tools at all 26 campuses over 36-months using a cyclical and phased approach to implementationthat includes aligning these new tools with our existing safety and student support programs, gathering feedback and support from stakeholders, developing a host of resources to support implementation, and adjusting our actual implementation as needed based on ongoing data collection and feedback from our campuses. We strongly believe that the district has developed an infrastructure to support school safety, which will not only allow for this project to be carried out successfully, but the impacts to be seen well beyond the life of the grant.