At least 25% of the children in your school live in desperate situations and suffer in silence as a result of the chaos and fear brought about by a parental Substance Use Disorder or mental illness, which in turn causes their ability to concentrate and achieve in school to be disrupted. In order that no child “falls through the cracks” Student Assistance Teams use existing staff to systematically identify and assist students in need of various kinds of support and direction. It may be an academic or behavioral problem. It may be the result of a bullying situation. Or it could be an unidentified learning problem. A Student Assistance program creates a faculty and support staff educated in the reality of what impedes a child’s becoming a balanced and productive student, and it provides educational support groups that counter these issues and increases academic achievement and classroom discipline, decreases absenteeism, and produces higher graduation rates – all educational goals.
Faculty teams seek to find the source of a student’s need and move to find the proper services to address their needs, which often are educational support groups specific to their situation. For more information about Student Assistance and support groups, read “Help Is Down the Hall,” a Handbook with an abundance of information about effective strategies to institute and maintain a low-cost program that can be downloaded below and salvage many hurting children and youth in your schools.