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Key points
- The American Rescue Plan Homeless Children and Youth Program has a Web site with many resources to help students facing homelessness.
- The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Web site has resources on trauma and particularly around trauma in schools.
- The National Center on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments has technical assistance on topics such as school climate and mental health.
The U.S. Department of Education's Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program and funds are available to offer educators and community members wishing to help vulnerable youth. In Part I, Part II, and Part III of this interview, the U.S. Department of Education's and Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program’s John McLaughlin, Ed.D. and Heather Denny, M.Ed., shared COVID-19’s impact on youth experiencing homelessness, how support staff can help such students, and special considerations in the area of trauma. In this final installment of the interview, McLaughlin and Denny share more insights into what can be done to support students. McLaughlin's answers begin first.
Is there anything you'd like to add about resources available?
At the most general level, for the American Rescue Plan Homeless Children and Youth Program, we do have a Web site that has resources, state plans, and all of our guidance. Similarly, we have a program Web site for McKinney-Vento.
We have a Web site for the National Center for Homeless Education, too, that contains a wealth of resources and, thus, may be hard to navigate. If you click “Resources,” you’ll see we have many written products for state coordinators and local liaisons, like a handbook and a 250-page toolkit. There are briefs that National Center for Homeless Education developed its own (that we cleared), after which are external resources for serving children and youth experiencing homelessness. You can also search for information by topic, or you can click “Topics” to look under different topics like trauma-informed care or postsecondary education or food insecurity. While it's a lot to navigate, I would really encourage people to look at it.
[Denny answers below, as well.]
Another good place to look for information on trauma is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Web site. They have a lot of resources around trauma and particularly around trauma in schools.
[McLaughlin answers again, below.]
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration runs System of Care, which is generally for at-risk youth who are usually in child welfare and juvenile justice, and wrap-around services definitely is a key piece of their model.
[Denny answers again, below.]
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration also offers school climate grants and supports quite a bit of school mental health through grant-funded programs.
Anything else? [McLaughlin answers again, below.]
Our program used to be in the Office of Safe and Healthy Students. It's now Safe and Supportive Schools, and they do run a center, the National Center on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments, and that would include technical assistance funded by the department on topics like school climate and mental health. For example, I know they're doing a series of webinars on trafficking and prevention of trafficking (homeless youth are particularly vulnerable for grooming for things like that), so we made sure that our state coordinators and liaisons who subscribe to National Center for Homeless Education's listserv all know about it, so they can join.
While the impact of homelessness on our children and teens is heartbreaking, it’s not only important but also is reassuring to learn about everything that's available and everything that's being done to help our vulnerable students.
We do feel lucky that we get to do inherently rewarding, meaningful work. We're still bureaucrats, and we have those days, but we do feel a direct connection with the students we serve and their families because they do email and call us. I would say also that anyone who reads this can contact National Center for Homeless Education; they have a hotline (1-800-308-2145) and email address (homeless@serve.org). We have state coordinators in every State Department of Education and they have to publish a directory of local liaisons for every school district, so it is possible to find out what resources are available at a local level.
Thank you for your time and for what you’re doing to help youth.
Part IV of IV.
