Safe Schools/Healthy Students

The Salinas Union High School District and fifteen community partners have been awarded a Safe Schools/Healthy Student (SS/HS) Initiative Grant. SS/HS provides students, schools and communities the benefit of enhanced and comprehensive educational, mental health, social service, law enforcement and juvenile justice system services and activities that can help promote healthy childhood development and prevent violence and drug abuse. This collaborative effort takes into account the complex interactions of environmental and individual risk factors.

The SS/HS project has the following goals:

• To build on community partnerships and students strengths to bring together schools, families and community organizations to improve the capacity of each one to be safe, disciplined and violence and drug free.
• To improve linkage of prevention and community-based services to provide a community based approach to violence prevention and healthy child development.
• To improve access to high quality and intensive mental health services linked with schools for the most high-risk students and their families.
• To increase the effectiveness of school-based interventions and referrals to community resources for students and families involved in or at high-risk of violence and substance abuse.

Funding for the project is provided by the Center for Mental Health Services, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Department of Justice Response Center, the U.S. Department of Education Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Community Development (grant award # S184L00021)