District joins CHOP Tri-County mental health consortium; will run IPT-AST groups at middle and high schools

Wallingford Swarthmore School District officials on Aug. 12 outlined participation in the CHOP Tri-County School Mental Health Consortium, a CHOP-led initiative that provides training and consultation to district staff under a four-year grant.

The district said the consortium is offered at no cost to the district and involves CHOP’s policy lab and the department of child and adolescent psychiatry and behavioral sciences working with intermediate units (CCIU, DCIU, MCIU) that serve as liaisons. Nine Delaware County districts currently participate, the district said.

District staff said the consortium’s goals are to strengthen school and district capacity to implement, evaluate and sustain tier 1 and tier 2 school mental health services and to improve access to mental health treatment in school settings.

Last year the consortium piloted two initiatives: a Leveraging Data learning collaborative and Interpersonal Psychotherapy–Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST). After district feedback, Wallingford Swarthmore said it will run IPT-AST at both the middle and high school this school year and will not continue the leveraging-data collaborative. “We did a lot of sharing out, and I don’t feel like we got a lot of receiving, quite frankly,” a presenter said when explaining the district’s shift in priorities.

IPT-AST is an evidence-based group counseling model. The district described the delivery model as a partnership between a school counselor, a behavioral health counselor and CHOP: CHOP provides training and ongoing consultation while district staff run the student groups. The district said the IPT-AST model involves one to two individual pre-assessments, screening, eight group sessions and ongoing consultation with CHOP professionals. The district said a typical group is limited to about 10 students and that cohorts can be run twice in a year if staffing allows.

Board members asked how students are identified for the groups; staff said referrals follow existing tier 2 referral routes: universal screener flags, teacher referrals and counseling referrals. Staff said the intervention is intended for students with depressive or anxiety symptoms identified via universal screener or other referral methods rather than for students with needs requiring tier 3 (intensive) services. “We still work with families in terms of partial and inpatient” care when students’ needs exceed school-based interventions, a presenter said.

The district also said the consortium builds local capacity: after training and a year of consultation, district staff can implement IPT-AST independently without CHOP providing direct service. The district said it is in year three of a four-year CHOP grant and that training this year will result in two trained staff in each of the middle and high schools.

Ending: The district will prioritize IPT-AST groups this year at the middle and high schools, with CHOP providing training and remote consultation; the district said further rollout depends on staffing and parental consent.