Implementation of Targeted Mental Health Interventions in Urban Schools: Preliminary Findings on the Impact of Training Strategy on Program Fidelity

ABSTRACT

School-based mental health programs are increasingly recognized as methods by which to improve children’s access to evidence-based practices (EBPs), particularly in urban under-resourced communities. School-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) is one approach to integrating mental health services into school-based programming; however, school providers require training and support to implement programs as intended. We have conducted a randomized controlled trial to compare two models for training school-based personnel to deliver group EBPs to children at high risk of developing internalizing or externalizing problems. School personnel (N = 24) from six schools in a large urban school district were trained with either a basic training and consultation strategy or an enhanced training and consultation strategy. Preliminary findings show that the enhanced strategy resulted in 9% higher content fidelity than the basic strategy. School personnel who were switched to the basic strategy had slightly lower content fidelity for the last 2 years of the trial and school personnel who continued to receive basic consultation during the step-down phase saw their fidelity decline. The two conditions did not differ with regard to process fidelity.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the students, parents, and school personnel participants who took their valuable time to participate in this study.

Compliance with ethical standards

The research in this paper involved human subjects. All participant students and school personnel provided informed consent. The study was approved by the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and by the Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) Research Review Committee of the School District of Philadelphia.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [R01HD073430].