Sacramento, California - Through funding from the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's Now is the Time Advancing Wellness and Resilience in Education for State Educational Agencies (NITT-AWARE-SEA) grant, the California Department of Education (CDE) will develop a comprehensive, coordinated, and integrated partnership with multiple service systems to help address critical mental health needs of California's kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) students.
With 6.2 million students, approximately 714,000 of whom have been identified as having a serious emotional disturbance, California is in dire need of prevention and early intervention strategies, services, and training. The CDE will deliver Youth Mental Health First Aid training to selected local educational agencies (LEAs) throughout the state.
The CDE is building on the existing Training Educators through Recognition and Identification Strategies (TETRIS) 
for school personnel which the CDE has been providing to LEAs since 2010. The existing all volunteer Student Mental Health Policy Workgroup, convened by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2012, will serve as the required State Management Team to assist in the development and implementation of grant requirements.
State Management Team
The NITT-AWARE-SEA State Management Team will coordinate and support the development and implementation of a coordination and integration plan that includes multiple service systems (education, behavioral health, criminal/juvenile justice, law enforcement, and child welfare).
Project Cal-Well
Project Cal-Well will support the training of school personnel and other adults who interact with youth in both school settings and communities to detect and respond to mental illness in children and youth. The LEAs will develop a comprehensive, coordinated, and integrated partnership with multiple service systems to help address critical mental health needs of their K-12 students, as well as to contribute to the CDE's statewide efforts. The selected LEA grantees will be building on their participation in the CDE's TETRIS for school personnel.
