Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and the Center for Childhood Resilience (CCR) at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago are expanding a comprehensive and collaborative system to better identify and respond to Pre-K-12 students who need mental health support. The expansion from 200 CPS pilot schools to all District schools aims to strengthen the District’s response to an escalating national youth mental health crisis, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The school-based Behavioral Health Team (BHT) model, developed at Lurie Children’s and led by Colleen Cicchetti, Executive Director of CCR with CPS colleagues, aims to maximize resources and collaboration, provide early identification of students with behavioral health needs, and connect students to evidence-based interventions. Already piloted in more than 200 CPS Schools, the District will begin expanding these teams to all 515 of its network schools next August with the goal of reaching all schools by School Year 2023-24. 

The expansion of effective trauma-engaged Behavioral Health Teams is a key initiative of the District’s Healing-Centered Framework with implementation formalized under the District’s recently adopted Comprehensive Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Policy. CPS will be using a variety of funds, including federal COVID-19 relief funds to support the expansion in SY 2023, but a final budget for the full expansion is still being developed.  The feasibility and implementation of the BHT model was recently highlighted in the journal Psychology in the Schools by lead author Tali Raviv, PhD, psychologist and Associate Director of CCR and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.  These teams are intended to support identification of and appropriate referral for a range of common mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, trauma-related symptoms, disruptive behaviors, adjustment difficulties, peer problems, attentional problems, and substance use.