Please see below for a brief overview of projects currently being conducted by the YESS Lab.
Integrating School Mentoring: Community Mentors in School Problem-Solving Teams
Psychology faculty at University of South Carolina (UofSC) and the Greenville County School District have partnered together to address the gap between the demand for student behavioral health supports and the number of trained professionals equipped to do so. Integrated school mentoring aims to increase the availability of support services by integrating community mentors into the school-problem solving teams within the multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) and implementing task-shifting. Supported by a $580,000 grant from the Duke Endowment to strengthen and expand school mental health.
South Carolina School Behavioral Health Academy
Psychology faculty at the University of South Carolina (UofSC) are creating the John H. Magill SC School Behavioral Health Academy (SBHA), a community of learning that will help schools build positive campus cultures and enhance mental health services to students. The SBHA will train personnel in creating safe schools, responding to crises, science-based approaches to counseling, whole-school approaches to preventing mental health and behavioral problems, among many other topics. Training experiences and coaching will evolve based on the preferences and needs of SC communities, which are being assessed through a statewide needs assessment. Supported by a $3.2 million grant from the SC Department of Health and Human Services, the SBHA complements recent state regulation changes designed to increase the number of mental health counselors supporting SC Schools. For more information visit https://www.scsbha.org.
Teacher-Student Relationship Quality
YESS Lab member Amanda Davis created a behavior-based student-report measure of teacher-student relationship quality. This measure can be used to inform intervention and prevention efforts to foster positive relationships in schools and improve relationships that may be strained. See more about her measure here: https://amandadavis.showit.site/measures.
John H. Magill School Mental Health Certificate Program
The certificate program is a joint initiative between the South Carolina Department of Mental Health (SCDMH) and the University of South Carolina School Behavioral Health (USC SBH) Team to build a well-qualified work force to support expansion of school mental health services in South Carolina. Graduate students in counseling, social work, psychology, and related fields complete a 600-hour school-based internship through SCDMH. They also complete 20 hours of professional development in school mental health through the USC SBH team. For more information watch this video or visit https://scsbhcertificate.weebly.com.
Quality Improvement Consultation
The YESS Lab consults with school districts, non-profit agencies, and youth-serving institutions to build and strengthen continuous quality improvement systems for youth-serving helpers’ training, support, and supervision. This work includes needs and capacity assessments, engineering training protocols and media, and shepherding the design, implementation, and maintenance of learning management systems. We have worked with some of the largest school districts in the US, and national and internationally representative youth serving agencies like Boys Hope Girls Hope, Mentor Together, Friends of the Children, and SOS Outreach.
Evidence-Informed Mental health Prevention, Assessment, Collaboration, and Treatment in Middle Schools (E-IMPACTS)
Partnering faculty and middle schools across Virginia, Missouri, and South Carolina are assessing the use of early identification systems with technical assistance support and collaboration models to determine what supports are most beneficial. Supported by a $3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
Motivational Interviewing Mentor Training
Members of the lab are collaborating with MENTOR National to create a video library of motivational interviewing training. This video library will showcase techniques that mentoring organizations can share with their mentors to help young people with behavior change. This project spans from script writing (MI content) to filming and video editing.
Cultural Humility Mentor Training
Lab members are working on developing cultural humility training content for mentors. After developing training, they hope to implement it and to determine whether it impacts mentors’ interactions with their mentees.
AMPED Research Program
Lab members are working directly with mentees in the AMPED Research Program in partnership with local middle schools (e.g., Hand Middle School) to study behaviors and relationships between mentees and teachers. Randomized trials of just-in-time training (JITT) for mentors have been supported through this program.