BUSSW Partners with Children’s Hospital on School-based Mental Health Services Project

The Boston University School of Social Work is a partner on a newly funded project of Dr. Heidi Ellis at Children’s Hospital in Boston. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) selected Children’s Hospital to participate in a new national program to reduce emotional and behavioral health problems among local children from low-income immigrant and refugee families.

The new program, Caring Across Communities: Addressing Mental Health Needs of Diverse Children and Youth, will provide $300,000 to the project to support mental health programs and services at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School in Dorchester over the next three years. BUSSW Professors Cassandra Clay and Lee Staples will be providing consultation and technical assistance on the project.

One of 15 selected by RWJF from a nationwide pool of applicants, the Boston project will focus on services to children from the growing Somali community. The idea behind the project is to identify ways to improve mental health care for Somali youth by better understanding their needs. The project will focus on three components of prevention and intervention: (1) educating parents about mental illness and treatment; (2) training teachers to identify mental illness in culturally sensitive ways; and (3) providing evidence-based treatment to youth in need.

BUSSW will fund two full tuition scholarships for Somali students enrolled in the MSW program. These students will provide mental health services as part of their MSW training during the three-year grant period. At the conclusion of the grant period, they will be fully trained and able to continue providing culturally-appropriate services to the Somali community.

“This project grew out of the need to address two basic problems—the first was an increase in referrals to our clinic of Somali youth who were having significant adjustment problems in school. The second was the realization that I, as a Western clinician, really didn’t understand how best to help these families—and in all of Massachusetts, there were no Somali therapists” said Dr. Ellis, who also is a psychologist at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Adds Professor Clay from BU, “We see this as an opportunity for shared learning and are looking forward to exchanges both with the students and staff of the project that promote our commitment to cultural humility and responsiveness."

The project will serve more than 700 people, including children and their families. Several partners have developed and will implement the program: Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston Public Schools, Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center, Somali Development Center, Boston University School of Social Work, The Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, The Boston Healing Landscape Project, the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights.