Huntsville City Schools adopting Handle With Care program for upcoming school year
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — Huntsville City Schools is gearing up for a new school year and that includes training faculty and school resource officers on new programs.
One program that the school district is adopting for the new school year focuses on better caring for students who have experienced trauma.
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The Handle With Care program, which is a branch of the National Children’s Advocacy Center, works to connect first responders to a child’s teacher and school administrators through a “handle with care” alert.
Pam Clasgens, the Community Awareness & Prevention Director for the National Children’s Advocacy Center said the Handle With Care program, “allows the school to be more sensitive to that child that day and to observe them and to let the school counselor know if the child seems to be in distress or having trauma symptoms that day at school.”
“We know that there are studies that show about 60% of American children are exposed to some sort of violence or abuse at some point during their childhood, and about 40% of them are directly impacted in some way,” Clasgens said. “Any of those types of things can affect a child’s ability to learn and it can affect their ability to regulate their behavior in the classroom.”
“So in a school setting, it might be the child may be extremely sleepy that day, or they’re acting out in some way, they might be angry, they might be very withdrawn, you might see some sort of extreme change in their behavior,” Clasgens said. “So, all sorts of things might be happening where they’re, the child, is not at their best.”
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The alert allows schools to monitor a student’s behavior and get them the proper mental health resources if needed.
Jasmine Green, the Student Welfare & Social Services Coordinator for Huntsville City Schools, told News 19 that the school system has been preparing to launch the Handle With Care program for months.
“We’re actually training our SROs [school resource officers] tomorrow on Handle With Care,” Green said. “We have been working with Huntsville Police Department to work with their patrol on how to use the database and make those reports.”
Huntsville City Schools will now be the third school district in North Alabama to adopt the program. It is already in place in Muscle Shoals and Madison.
“We’re thrilled that school systems are interested in adopting this program,” Clasgens said.
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Madison City Schools adopted the program last school year. Stephanie Allen, the Mental Health Services Coordinator for Madison City Schools, told News 19 that the program has already made a difference.
“We actually got a handle with care notice the first day we rolled it out, and we can see the difference in the schools,” Allen said.
The alerts work through a database, and they are completely confidential. The only information a school is given is the notice to “Handle with Care,” they do not receive any information about the situation surrounding the interaction with first responders.
Schools receive the notices early in the morning before the start of the next school day.
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