Prioritizing training more school-based mental health providers
METRICS supports federally-funded grantees who are dedicated to addressing the national shortage of school-based mental health practitioners. These grantees received funding from the US Department of Education for either a School Based Mental Health Services (SBMH) or a Mental Health Service Professional (MHSP) project to recruit, train, and retain a strong mental health workforce in our K-12 schools across the country. METRICS disseminates best-practice resources, provides individual grant assistance, and helps grantees ensure that they are meeting their targets, so that these grantees can continually improve as they grow the next generation of school-based mental health practitioners.
The research is clear: the shortage among mental health professionals in the US is a primary reason students lack access to the mental health services they need. METRICS is dedicated to closing this gap by providing schools with the tools they need to strengthen the pipeline of high-quality mental health professionals and increase access to critical mental health services in schools nationwide. These funds will help change the lives of children nationwide by building a mental health infrastructure in schools and communities across the country.
Building stronger training programs
- Provide individualized assistance
Provide technical assistance to grantees through a tiered approach that includes universal support to all, targeted support on select topics for subsets of grantees, and intensive support for individual grantees. - Collect and share best practices
Disseminate best practices in credentialing, recruiting, training and developing, and retaining school-based mental health services providers. - Analyze data and outcomes
Support high-quality grantee data collection and analysis so that programs can continually improve at training the next generation of school-based mental health providers.
