Bringing your school community together to examine student needs and explore digital products will help you leverage each group’s expertise and lived experiences in the planning and implementation phases. This well-rounded, collaborative process is informed by feedback from across your school community. These perspectives offer valuable insights that help assess students' mental health challenges across environments, reveal how digital solutions can effectively engage and support students, illuminate cultural values within your school community, and identify champions committed to students' academic success and well-being.
Foundations of Community Engagement
To set your process up for success from the start, first understand who your community members are that have a stake in implementing digital mental health tools and what best practices for relationship building you should utilize.
Stage 1: Community Members to Include
Identifying community members to engage in the process begins with understanding who they are and the roles each of them can play in implementing digital mental health and well-being products. Districts should engage community groups that will be involved in implementing your chosen product. For example, if teachers implement the product with students in the classroom, teacher voices should be heard through the planning and implementation process.
Students
Students:
Students provide critical perspectives on their experiences, needs, and barriers to accessing support. As the ultimate users of the product, they can share what resonates, which products they are (or are not) likely to use, and offer feedback on implementation.
Caregivers
Parents/
Caregivers:
Parents and caregivers can share about their family’s needs, product alignment with their values and culture, and technology available at home. They can also provide input on any products that require their involvement or will be used at home.
Teachers
Teachers:
Teacher perspective and buy-in is essential when implementing digital products in classrooms. They provide expertise on how to incorporate products, implementation logistics, and necessary training , and bring an understanding of common challenges students face.
Technology Departments
Technology departments:
Technology departments are essential for understanding how a digital product will integrate with existing systems. They ensure appropriate data security and can clarify the possibilities and limitations of district-wide technology.
Campus administrators
Campus administrators:
Campus administrators understand both district and campus priorities and how digital products fit into these priorities to best support student success.
District administrators
District administrators:
District administrators understand district priorities and how digital products fit into these priorities to best support student success.
School Mental Health Providers
School Mental Health Providers
School counselors and other mental health professionals on campus can share how digital mental health products can best support student well-being and how these tools fit into the broader system of care being provided at schools.
Finance administrators
Finance administrators:
Finance administrators can advise on how digital products can be financed through existing district funding streams and/or help identify new sources of funding that might be accessible.
Stage 2: Best Practices for Building and Maintaining Relationships
Building trusting relationships with and among school-community groups is an essential foundation for successful community engagement. It helps them work together to meet student mental health needs and provides opportunities to educate and unify your community.
This demonstrates that their input is valued and allows you to fully benefit from their expertise, resources, and experiences. It shows transparency and collaborative decision-making and invites a community discussion about evidence-based practices to address the mental health needs of students and staff.
Cunderstand how you plan to take differing perspectives into account. They should also understand that while they will guide decision-making, school boards and district staff will make the final decisions that consider local decision-making policies from state law, board policy, and financial procurement rules.
Listen fully to each point of view, looking for areas of agreement and alignment between perspectives. Keep each group’s perspective in mind as you move through the needs assessment, product selection, funding, and implementation phases, weighing the pros and cons of each perspective for a final decision that reflects shared community values and can effectively meet student needs.
For specific questions to engage each community member group,
visit here.Planning for Community Engagement at Each Stage
Community engagement is a continuous process, and you should plan for it throughout the journey of selecting and implementing digital products to support student mental health and well-being. The remainder of this section highlights every stage of community engagement:
assessing student needs,
selecting a product,
funding, and
implementation. While many community members have a role throughout the process, we call out the community groups in each stage.
Stage 1: Engaging Your Community to Assess Student Needs
It is critical to assess students’ needs for mental health support from the beginning. In this phase, you will bring together a variety of perspectives and expertise to understand the challenges students are experiencing around mental health and well-being, as well as gauge where student well-being and mental health can be supported by digital products.
Identify mental health challenges and barriers to care that students experience at school, home, and in the community.
Assess the overall campus climate.
Understand the cultural values and beliefs represented within your school community around mental health and digital tools.
Collaboratively analyze student qualitative and quantitative data surrounding mental health needs and challenges.
Build consensus around priority needs and which can be supported through digital products.
Collect input from parents and caregivers on how they would like to be included in the referral, screening, and/or treatment process.
For more details, check out:
Assess Student Needs Stage 2: Engage Your Community in Product Selection
The next stage is selecting the most appropriate digital products to support student mental health and well-being. At this stage, you will want to get school community input on all of the factors involved in assessing and selecting digital products. Community engagement during this phase can help you:
Identify technological barriers and challenges faced on school campuses and in students’ homes.
Assess the evidence of products.
Determine the accessibility needs of students, parents and caregivers regarding the type of technology available in their homes, needs related to disability, and language.
Map the ways in which needs assessments connect to outcomes.
Students, parents and caregivers, teachers, technology department, school counselors, and other campus mental health professionals.
For more details, check out:
Select Relevant ProductsStage 3: Engage Your Community to Identify & Secure Funding
Engaging community expertise is key to developing a comprehensive funding plan for your district’s digital mental health solutions. This enables you to tap into available resources in your district and community, maximizing program outcomes, and sustaining the product beyond the first year(s) of implementation. Community engagement during the funding phase can help you:
Uncover areas of duplicative services, overlapping funding, and ineffective or under-utilized programs in your district that can be discontinued or combined to free up funding.
Discover areas where collaboration with other district departments with aligned goals and needs can increase efficiency.
Engage district and campus staff responsible for budgeting and grant procurement to help identify and secure financial resources.
Invite community and philanthropic partners to support your initiative.
District and campus administrators (including from technology, counseling and social work, and human resources and finance), grant writers and managers, community partners, and philanthropic foundations.
For more details, check out:
Develop a Funding StrategySuccessfully implementing digital products to support student mental health and well-being takes careful planning and involves community involvement at each stage: pre-implementation, initial roll-out or pilot phase, full implementation, and ongoing quality improvement. Your goal is to develop and fine-tune an effective implementation plan that optimizes program outcomes and the products’ impact on student mental health.
Conclusion
Engaging your school community throughout the process of identifying opportunities for digital tools to support the mental health needs of students is critical to successful procurement and implementation. Prioritizing time to engage with community members early and often to understand different perspectives, share learnings, and align interests is essential to success. Although the process of engaging community members takes extra time and effort, the investment of both will ensure that your digital mental health and well-being product is implemented effectively for the maximum benefit to students.
