WHAT ISTHE PARTNERSHIP FOR KIDS/PARK PROJECT?

In 2002 the Department for Children and Families, in collaboration with parents, the Bridgeport Board of Education and local community providers, received a six-year, $9.5 million grant from SAMHSA to build a System of Care in the City of Bridgeport. The Initiative, called the Partnership for Kids or PARK Project, is now in its fourth year of funding and has helped over 180 families with behavioral and mental health challenges get needed services that allow children and youth to remain in school and in their own community.

The PARK Project is a school-based System of Care with staff co-located in the schools targeted. To achieve its goals, the Project has (1) added specialized care coordinators to the Student Assistance Teams in five target schools; (2) provided training to staff in seven targeted schools on how to provide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) to children; (3) created a local Family Organization (Bridgeport Parents for Empowerment, Support, and Training or B-PEST) to train and support parents as advocates for their children; and (4) developed a youth leadership movement to give children and youth a voice in decision making that affects them. The project is now entering its fifth year of funding and has embarked upon various sustainability strategies to continue the foundation which it has developed.

PROJECT INFRASTRUCTURE

The Connecticut Department of Children & Families is the actual grantee of record and Maria Brereton, the DCF Regional Administrator for Greater Bridgeport, serves as the Principal Investigator. The United Way of Eastern Fairfield County is the project’s fiduciary and their CEO, Merle Berke-Schlessel, serves on the Project’s Executive Committee. The Project has established partnerships with multiple service agencies in Bridgeport, including public, private, and faith-based organizations. The Project Director is Stanley N. Bernard, formerly a research associate and director of administration and human resources at the National Center for Children in Poverty at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. While at the Center, Mr. Bernard worked closely with Dr. Jane Knitzer, a primary architect of much of the System of Care philosophy and writer of “At the School House Door”, the report that launched the federal initiative to stem the tide of deteriorating children’s mental health in the United States. Mr. Bernard is a Kellogg Fellow at the Mailman School of Public Health finishing his Doctorate in Public Health.

NOTABLE SUCCESSES

In the space of two and a half years of full implementation (the first year was a strategic planning year), PARK has had some notable successes in reducing symptoms of mental health in youth, improving parenting, and developing a more productive school environment. We itemize the successes as follows:

• Improvement in the overall mental health of participants: The Project has had success in reducing the levels of overall rates of depression and the number of somatic complaints of students. PARK parents report decreased problem behaviors, increased functioning, and increased utilization of strengths for the youth, and a decrease in internal strain for themselves.

• Board of Education adopting Positive Behavioral Intervention & Supports (PBIS) for District-wide Implementation: The Park project introduced PBIS, a nationally recognized evidence-based practice, into its targeted schools. The schools report that PBIS is successfully reducing the office referrals for students and is enabling clearer identification of students with severe emotional and behavioral difficulties. As a result, the Superintendent has decided to implement PBIS district-wide and recently received a three-year $1,000,000 grant from the US Dept of Education to implement this strategy. In addition, the BOE and Park Project are partners with Dr. George Sugai at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Sugai is one of the progenitors of the PBIS concept and co-director of the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.

• Developing and Supporting a Family-Run Organization (B-PEST): PARK, in collaboration with Families United for Children’s Mental Health, developed B-PEST (Bridgeport Parents for Empowerment Support and Training). B-PEST operates support and advocacy groups run for and by families of children and youth with emotional, behavioral and mental health challenges. B-PEST, which serves Greater Bridgeport, provides individual help and advocacy, support for parents, training programs and educational workshops.

As a key player in the area’s system of care development, B-PEST parents were responsible for the development and the implementation, along with the Yale Consultation Center, of a Family Engagement Study exploring issues that affect families engaging local service providers. The outcomes from the study have served as a catalyst to develop a community-wide cultural competency and customer service training for providers. Over 250 parents have participated in B-PEST activities, which include peer-to-peer support, training, legislative advocacy, and local advocacy with the Board of Education. The core support groups of B-PEST average a membership of 50 attendees monthly.

• Youth Advocacy Organization (Youth Unlimited): Our Youth group, “Youth Unlimited” or YU for short, was launched in January 2005. Currently our enrollment is at 130 youth in grades 6 through 12. Unlike our direct service components, YU is not restricted to serving only those youth in the target schools, but can serve all eligible youth attending any Bridgeport school. Most of the students in YU come from low-income homes with single mothers as heads of household. Many are at risk or are already involved in gangs, the drug trade, or the juvenile justice system. Add to these situations that most YU kids also have a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health challenge. However, despite these significant issues, the peer-to-peer mentoring and weekly support group meetings has been successful at achieving a significant drop in class cutting, school drop out, gang involvement and academic failure among our YU members.

Click HERE to learn more about Park Project.