The Educational Service Center of Northeast Ohio’s Student Wellness Department is offering free Handle With Care (HWC) training to its member school districts. There are multiple ESC Student Wellness Consultants that have completed the required training through Handle with Care: Ohio and have the ability to train local school districts and their corresponding first responders (police, fire, and EMS).
HWC is cross system collaboration that was piloted in a school district in West Virginia but is now becoming a more common system in schools in Ohio and across the country. “It’s a trauma-informed strategy that gives school employees a heads up when something is going on with a student so that they are more aware and they can respond in a way that is supportive as opposed to punitive,” said ESC Student Wellness Consultant Cathy Papp, MSW, LISW-S.
The premise of HWC would allow a first responder to send a notification to designated school district personnel when they become aware of a student being exposed to a traumatic event without giving details to the nature of the event. Then the school filters the information to the bubble of employees that surround that student on any given day. The goal is for the student to never know what is happening but for the teacher, counselor, or nurse to look for warning signs and behavior that is not normal for the student and to provide additional support.
The Student Wellness Department started taking steps toward rolling out this program in October 2020 but due to the virtual nature of last school year and COVID-19 restrictions, they have really begun to see schools take interest in fall 2021.
The actual training sessions are easily customized to what works best for each school district. One training method is that the ESC Student Wellness Consultant trains everyone in the district, whether in person or through a virtual platform. The second method would be that a few point people from the district complete their training through the ESC and then take the Train the Trainer course so they can then train the remaining people in their district. A major goal is to turn the first responder training into a video course, allowing flexibility in the three different shifts they work. “We are trying to think outside the box for the training,” said ESC Student Wellness Consultant Heather Corcoran, JD.
The certified educators like teachers, counselors, and social workers take part in a 30 minute training session while the non-certified employees such as those in the transportation, nutrition, and custodial departments participate in a 15 minute session. The first responder trainings are also 15 minutes. Knowing that schools only have a limited number of professional development (PD) days “we try to emphasize that no training is more than 30 minutes so the training could actually happen at staff meetings which happen monthly so that if a district is really interested in doing it they don’t have to wait for full PD day,” said Papp.
Parma City Schools held a district-wide training session in October where Corcoran trained the high school staff while Papp trained the staff at the elementary school during Professional Development Day. There are four districts currently in different stages of the process that will aim to be completely trained by spring 2022: Parma City Schools, Richmond Heights Local Schools, Shaker Heights City Schools, and South Euclid Lyndhurst City Schools.
School districts interested in connecting with the ESC Student Wellness Department to learn more about their HWC training can reach out to [email protected] or [email protected].