How Does Student Assistance Connect to Special Education?

SAP includes a process of identification for any student demonstrating problems with behavior, academics, health, or attendance. When a referral is received or after initial data has been collected and reviewed, the coordinator or team may have sufficient information on prior interventions to recommend that the special education testing process should be initiated for that individual, and then the referral is passed on to the appropriate special education team.

A SAP may help both the student and classroom teachers during the testing process, especially if identified needs such as grief counseling, participating in a COA group, or appropriate clothing for school become evident. Needs that typically are not met through special education services can be handled by the SAP. The SAP, however, should not create an action plan for a student that infringes on the individual education plan for the student.

A note of caution….when the SAP is known in the school as the entry point for initiating special education testing, staff members frequently will no longer use the SAP for students who are not perceived as needing that testing. This leaves a population of students dealing with other barriers to learning unserved.

What is the relationship between Student Assistance Programs (SAP) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)?

“Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process of developing fundamental social and emotional competencies in children. SEL programming is based on the understanding that (1) many different kinds of problem behaviors are caused by the same or similar risk factors, and (2) the best learning emerges from supportive relationships that make learning both challenging and meaningful.

Bolstering student strengths and preventing problems such as violence, drug use, or dropping out is most effective when multiyear, integrated efforts develop children’s social and emotional skills. This is best done through effective classroom instruction, student engagement in positive activities in and out of the classroom, and broad parent and community involvement in program planning, implementation, and evaluation.” Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2005). Safe and Sound: An Educational Leader’s Guide to Evidence-Based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Programs, Illinois Edition. Chicago, IL: Author

SAP and SEL fit together seamlessly through shared goals and non-overlapping modes of delivery. Both SAP and SEL practices create safe, supportive motivating environments where students can learn. Further, they both advocate and provide methods for a non-fragmented, planned comprehensive approach to creating these environments.

SEL includes within its comprehensive approach a critical focus on helping students develop fundamental social and emotional competencies through classroom practices and curricular instruction. SAP, as a prevention/early intervention approach to reduce student risk and enhance protective factors, is particularly useful for students who need support in addition to what is offered in the classroom for developing these competencies.

SAPs bolster strengths of students at risk of school failure for non-academic reasons through skill building support groups, individual contact, and a variety of multi-level interventions. Each SAP uses assessment practices to identify, respond to and reduce the student support resource gaps in that particular school, which result in a unique constellation of services and interventions available in that school. Additionally, SAPs contribute to creating school-wide policies and practices that serve to prevent, address and reduce problems such as violence and substance use, by providing alternatives to suspension intervention for policy violators, parent education, and prevention activities for youth.

Contributed by J. Toth of CPRD for the SAP Sustainability Project

How Are Parents Involved in the Student Assistance Process?

Parent involvement in Student Assistance can take several forms. With universal SAP strategies, parents are often involved in planning and implementing those school wide strategies. This may include participating in a community coalition that fosters prevention efforts connected with the SAP, attending parent universities, participation in collaborations that review policy and procedures, sponsoring after school drug free activities for students, completing parent lessons as part of a life skills curriculum or participating in camps or conferences focusing on prevention, intervention and support activities, among others. For selected populations, parents are included with information about the activities including permission forms for support groups, and parent / student activities sheets as part of the educational curriculum. For the indicated population, parental involvement may start with a parent contacting the SAP for help in determining what is happening and seeking solutions for problems with their child. Contact by the Student Assistance coordinator or team that parental input is needed as part of the screening process along with an invitation to problem solve with team representatives is also part of parental involvement. Parental involvement in a series of educational sessions as part of an abeyance contract may also be part of the Student Assistance process.

What Are Some of the Frequently Used Terms with Student Assistance?

Administrative Support: a Student Assistance Program is most successful (as identified in best practices research) when the building administrator is a member of the Student Assistance Core Team and attends meetings regularly. This support is vital in understanding how the SAP functions and the students identified for services.

Assessment: School-Based – refers to a process of examining relevant school-based data to determine the existing behavior, academic, health, and attendance status of the student. This may include an interview with the student and parents/guardians. Agency-Based – refers to a prescribed instrument administered by a trained individual to determine the status of the client in relation to behaviors and relationships correlating to the problems leading to the assessment.

ATOD: alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs

At-Risk: At-risk students are students who are not experiencing success in school and are potential dropouts. At-risk students tend not to participate in school activities and have a minimal identification with the school. They have disciplinary and truancy problems that lead to credit problems. They exhibit impulsive behavior and their peer relationships are problematic. Family problems, drug addictions, pregnancies, and other problems prevent them from participating successfully in school. As they experience failure and fall behind their peers, school becomes a negative environment that reinforces their low self-esteem. (U.S. Department of Education, ERIC Digest)

Best Practices: defined by the prevention field as strategies and programs which are deemed research-based by scientists and researchers at the National Institute for Drug Abuse, the national center for Substance Abuse prevention, and other federally based organizations.

Core Team Model of SAP: a group of individuals, typically 6 to 8, that are employed by the school district that provide SAP services to staff and students. The SAP core team is typically composed of an administrator, counselor, nurse, social worker, and classroom teachers.

Bullying: when someone with greater power unfairly hurts someone with less power over and over again. (Johnson Institute)

Developmental Assets: Search-Institute’s 40 positive experiences and qualities that all of us have the power to bring into the lives of children and youth. www.search-institute.org

Emotional Intelligence: the ability to sense, understand, and effectively apply the power and acumen of emotions as a source of human energy, information, connection, and influence. Requires that we learn to acknowledge and value feelings in ourselves and others and that we appropriately respond to them effectively applying the energy of emotions in our daily life and work. (Executive EQ)

Enabling: unwittingly protecting a person from the consequences of inappropriate behavior out of love, compassion, or fear

Entitlement: the belief that people have the right to use violence or threats of violence to express feelings, meet needs, or satisfy desires. (Johnson Institute)

Evidence-Based Practices: strategies used to prevent or address issues impacting healthy cognitive, social, emotional and physical development which have been tested over a period of time that show predictable results. (Center for Substance Abuse Prevention)

External Model of SAP: a model for Student Assistance service delivery that originates from in individual employed outside the district that works within the district. The individual is typically employed by a social service agency such as a substance abuse and mental health agency. The individual most closely related to this model is Ellen Morehouse.

IASAP: (Illinois Association of Student Assistance Professionals) a group of professionals working with Student Assistance including educators, community members, and social service workers throughout the state of Illinois to provide information, advocacy, and a unified voice for state directives concerning Student Assistance. The association has provided a major conference on Student Assistance related issues for the past 11 years. (www.iasap.org)

Internal Model of SAP: a model for Student Assistance service delivery that originates from an individual employed within the school district. This individual provides prevention, intervention, and support services to the students and staff.

Intervention: Formal – typically a one-time preplanned event facilitated by a trained interventionist and includes a number of people who have been impacted over time by an individual’s inappropriate behavior (often substance use). The goal of a formal intervention is to gain agreement to begin treatment. Informal – a process of using a series of strategies that attempt to address changes in behavior, health, attendance, and academics.

Identification: a process of selecting students for SAP services based upon pre-determined criteria for those services. Criteria may include academics, policy violations, positive random drug screen, fighting, bullying behaviors.

NSAA (National Student Assistance Association) a professional association that advocates for the continued development and advancement of the highest standards for Student Assistance practices. The association currently works closely with the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities, and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. (www.nsaa.us)

Prevention: strategies applied to a universal or selected population to address risk factors and build protective factors. Universal Prevention Strategies: strategies that address the entire population Selective Prevention Strategies: strategies that target subsets of the total population that are deems to be at risk by virtue of their membership in a certain group or subset. Indicated Prevention Strategies: strategies directed to individuals who are exhibiting early signs of substance abuse and other problem behaviors.

Promising Practices: programs and practices that have some quantitative data showing positive outcomes, but does not have enough research or replication to support generalizable outcomes. (Center for Substance Abuse Prevention)

Protective Factors: strategies or attributes which are said to inoculate or protect a person and can strengthen an individual’s determination to reject or not engage in risk behaviors. (Hawkins and Catalano)

Resiliency: a concept often associated with risk and protective factors, and related to the responses of individuals to stressors over time. Often considered to be the ability to ‘bounce back’ after trauma. (Bernard)

Risk Factors: an identified association between a characteristic or attribute or an individual, group, or environment that increases the probability of a certain phenomenon occurring including substance use, delinquent behavior, school drop-out, and teen pregnancy. (Hawkins and Catalano)

SAP Core Team: a consistent group of individuals employed by the school district that function as a team to identify, assess, and address needs through a variety of appropriate strategies promoting healthy cognitive, social, emotional and physical development.

SAP Counselor: an individual either contracted through an agency as an interventionist (external) or funded as a school position (internal) who handles the SAP prevention, intervention, and post treatment activities for the school.

Screening: informal screening involves gathering and reviewing data descriptive of the student’s academic and behavioral performance in school. Formal screening involves a professionally designed tool that is administered by an individual trained to use the tool. A screening tool is usually more general in nature and much briefer than an assessment tool.

Support Groups: meetings set up typically on a weekly basis of six to eight participants to discuss a series of identified topics. School-based support groups are educational in nature and follow a specified curriculum. School-based support groups should be facilitated by trained adults, and focus on such topics as grief and loss, life skills, concern over another’s chemical use, and children of alcoholics.

System Change: changes occurring as a result of SAP strategies in how something about the given system is perceived or in practices of the system.

Tolerance: occurs when violence is accepted as the norm by adults or young people who ignore, rationalize, or minimize incidents of violence.

Violence: any word, look, sign, or act that hurts a person’s body, feelings, or things. (Johnson institute).