RWJF Local Funding Partnerships Project Results

Connecting With Care in Low-Income Boston Neighborhoods

Building the capacity of local mental health providers to deliver school-based services

Dates of Project: July 2006 through December 2011

Field of Work: Delivering school-based mental health services

Problem Synopsis: Children in low-income neighborhoods in Boston generally lack access to much-needed mental health services.

Synopsis of the Work: From 2006 through 2011, the Connecting With Care project of the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention brought full-time mental-health clinicians to schools in the low-income Boston neighborhoods of Dorchester and Roxbury.

Key Results:

  • Provided mental health treatment to 486 children in seven schools
  • Demonstrated that it was economically feasible to have full-time clinicians in schools
  • Trained 128 clinicians, teachers, and other school personnel in treating trauma and other children's mental health conditions
  • Initiated the first school-based trauma systems therapy program in the United States. Trauma systems therapy is a treatment framework that targets children who have difficulty managing their emotions as a result of prior traumatic experiences.

 

 

The schools previously had a part-time drop-in model and they thought putting full-time clinicians in the schools would be cost-prohibitive; that they'd need a $25,000 subsidy. We convinced them that we could come in with a much lower number. The ramp-up cost can be higher, but it comes down if they hang in there." — Robert Kilkenny, executive director of the Alliance for Inclusion & Prevention.

 

For refugees from Somali who live in Boston, "Walking through the portal that says 'mental disease' is a big step. There is a gigantic stigma." — Robert Kilkenny, executive director of the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention.

RWJF Local Funding Partnerships Project Results

Individual project results from the national program, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships

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RWJF grantee demonstrates an affordable way to deploy full-time, mental-health clinicians in public schools.

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